Belknap, Jeremy. Sacred Poetry: consisting of Psalms and Hymns, adapted to Christian Devotion, in Public and Private; Selected from the best Authors, with Variations and Additions. Boston: Thomas & Andrews and D. West, 1797. Second Edition, with Improvements. [9802]
Full leather binding, worn with cut marks and some loss of leather to front board, spine with gilt lines, no title label, front joint cracked and weak. 14.5 x 9 cm (5 3/4 x 3 1/2 inches, front board slightly bowed. "Martin Wilders Book" in brown ink on ffep. Title page bordered. Psalms: (i)-(vi), (7)-231, erratum page, (8) pp. index. Then Hymns with new pagination: (1)-148, 153-262 pp., including Index. The two leaves (pp. 149-152) do not appear to have been bound in. One leaf of the Hymns section is torn without loss; the last leaf of index is tattered in the margins; lacks the rear free end papers. Good. Full leather.
The first edition of 1795 is BAL 936. The Preface by Belknap in this second edition is reprinted from the first edition. In it he says that the authors, when known, are printed with the hymns and gives a brief biography of Anne Steele. He also admonishes Christians who entertain scruples against singing hymns - as opposed to exclusively Psalms - and rejects their assertion that hymn-singing is idolatry.
Jeremy Belknap (1744-1798), b. & d. at Boston, Massachusetts. He was a Harvard graduate (1762), a school teacher, and a conservative Congregational pastor who opposed the "Halfway Covenant." He was an ardent patriot for the Revolutionary cause; he wrote a pamphlet condemning the British occupation of Boston, and helped his parents to escape the city. He was asked to become chaplain to the American army outside of Boston, but declined due to ill health. Belknap is recognized as the first American modern historian, having written his History of New Hampshire in three volumes between 1784 and 1792. He also wrote several theological works, and, as an early opponent of the slave trade, he drew up a petition to the Massachusetts General Court in 1788 calling for its abolition. He was a member of several Societies that encouraged benefactory or educational improvements, and was an overseer of Harvard College.
"He wrote no hymns but made an important contribution to American hymnody in his collection Sacred Poetry: consisting of Psalms and Hymns, adapted to Christian Devotion, in Public and Private; Selected from the best Authors, with Variations and Additions (Boston, 1795), which ran into many editions. His intention was to provide a book acceptable to both the conservative and the liberal wings of Congregationalism, to bridge the widening gap which resulted in the formation of the Unitarian denomination a generation later. In this he failed, for only the liberal churches accepted it, though it was widely used by them for 40 years, being much of the best of the period. It includes 300 hymns from the best English sources, and was the first to introduce to Americans the hymns by Anne Steele. The only American hymns in the collection are Jacob Kimball's metrical version of Psalm 65 and Mather Byles' 'When wild confusion rends the air.'" - Henry Wilder Foot, Dictionary of North American Hymnology.
With a signed provenance card from the music collection of A. Merril Smoak, Jr., DWS.
