The Rouse Psalter and Metrical Psalmody

Background

The Westminster Standards do not formally take a position on exclusive psalmody vs hymnody, but the Assembly's revision of Francis Rouse's metrical psalms had enormous practical consequences. Rouse had published *The Booke of Psalmes in English Meter* (1643), drawing on Sternhold and Hopkins (the 1562 English metrical psalter, in use for nearly a century) and on the work of Henry Ainsworth and George Sandys. The Long Parliament referred the work to the Assembly, which revised it extensively through 1645-46. The General Assembly of the Church of Scotland adopted a further revision in 1650 — the Scottish Metrical Psalter — which has been continuously sung in Scottish Reformed worship to the present.

The Assembly’s handling

The Assembly revised Rouse's Psalter line by line through 1645 and 1646 — perhaps the most labour-intensive single project at Westminster after the Catechisms. The committee chairs were John Lightfoot and Thomas Gataker, working with Rouse himself. The 1646 revision was published as *The Psalms of David in Meeter* and adopted by the Long Parliament for use in English parishes. The Scottish General Assembly's further revision in 1650 produced the Scottish Metrical Psalter, the definitive form. The Westminster Standards never formally legislate exclusive psalmody, but the labour the Assembly put into the Psalter and the prominence of the Directory's prescription of psalm-singing made metrical psalmody the standard Reformed worship practice for two centuries.