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To this fashion may be attributed the depraved condition of church-singing of which Walters so forcibly wrote, and while it continued the case seemed hopeless, in spite of singing-schools and singing-teachers.
John Tufts, of Newbury, who had previously prepared "A very Plain and Easy Introduction to the Art of Singing Psalm-tunes," issued a collection of tunes in three parts. To the Puritans, this great number of new tunes appeared fairly monstrous, and formed the signal for bitter objections and fierce quarrels. In 1647 a tract had appeared on church-singing which had attracted much attention.
At the same time, also,Œcolampadius, to the great annoyance of his adversaries, succeeded in obtaining the introduction of church-singing in German; for the government, in accordance with the feeble advice of Erasmus, in answer to the question as to how it should act amid the zeal for innovation breaking out on all sides, adopted vacillating measures; to-day it suffered the departure of individual monks and nuns from their cloisters; to-morrow, in order to make such cases less frequent, it denied the rights of citizenship to those who had gone out, and rendered the practice of any worldly calling difficult; now it ratified episcopal laws, and then arbitrarily abolished festival-days; in one church it supported the celebration of the mass, in another allowed it to be abolished, so that Basel was as good as given up by the Five Cantons.
The shades of Cotton, of Sewall, of Mather must have groaned aloud at the suggestions, instructions, and actions of this unregenerate, daring, and "amusing" leader of church-singing.
So villanous had church-singing at last become that the clergymen arose in a body and demanded better performances; while a desperate and disgusted party was also formed which was opposed to all singing.
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