The question whether instrumental music may lawfully be introduced into the worship of God in the Churches of the New Testament, has been considered by Cotton Mather and answered to his own satisfaction and that of his contemporary countrymen and their fellow puritans, in his “Historical Remarks upon the discipline practised in the Churches of New England.”—“The Instrumental Music used in the old Church of Israel,” he says, “was an Institution of God; it was the Commandment of the Lord by the Prophets; and the Instruments are called God's Instruments, and Instruments of the Lord. Now there is not one word of Institution in the New Testament for Instrumental Music in the Worship of God. And because the holy God rejects all he does not command in his worship, he now therefore in effect says to us, _I will not hear the melody of thy Organs_. But on the other hand the rule given doth abundantly intimate that no voice is now heard in the Church but what is significant, and edifying by signification; which the voice of Instruments is not.” Worse logic than this and weaker reasoning no one would wish to meet with in the controversial writings of a writer from whose opinions he differs most widely. The Remarks form part of that extraordinary and highly interesting work the _Magnalia Christi Americana_. Cotton Mather is such an author as Fuller would have been if the old English Worthy, instead of having been from a child trained up in the way he should go, had been calvinisticated till the milk of human kindness with which his heart was always ready to overflow had turned sour. “Though Instrumental Music,” he proceeds to say, “were admitted and appointed in the worship of God under the Old Testament, yet we do not find it practised in the Synagogue of the Jews, but only in the Temple. It thence appears to have been a part of the ceremonial Pedagogy which is now abolished; nor can any say it was a part of moral worship. And whereas the common usage now hath confined Instrumental Music to Cathedrals, it seems therein too much to Judaize,—which to do is a part of the Anti-Christian Apostacy,—as well as to Paganize.—If we admit Instrumental Music in the worship of God, how can we resist the imposition of all the instruments used among the ancient Jews? Yea, Dancing as well as playing, and several other Judaic actions?”