Rankin's critique of Watts: 'almost opposite to the spirit of the gospel'

Context

In this section, Rankin quotes and critiques Isaac Watts’s own preface to his psalm paraphrases. Watts had argued that the Old Testament Psalms, while inspired, were suited to the Jewish dispensation and needed to be “Christianized” for New Testament worship. Rankin seizes on Watts’s language to argue that Watts himself admitted his compositions departed from Scripture.

Extract

And boldly charges the fpirit, with falfhood. “Some of them are almoft oppofite to the fpirit of the gofpel.” If we have not proven he holds a contrail between the precepts: we have fhewn, he maintains it is almoft oppofite. But he is approaching the point he means to introduce. The next fentence, he fays, “It is foreign to the ftate of the new teftament.” Now you obferve, he has got another gofpel—not the fame kind, but almoft oppofite: not pertinent, but foreign; but as to circumftances, fays he, widely different.

I know not, that the matter and words of God, which contain the doctrine of life muft change, with our circumftances. If he means by our circumftances, our ftate of nature, and the fteps of regeneration—I think, we ftand upon a par with our fathers: but if he means, the prefent mode of our information, I acknowledge a change. But they prefent all the fame objects of faith, and cannot be foreign—fave to the carnal mind, which cannot difcern fpiritual things: for if our gofpel be hid, it is hid from them that are loft.

Significance

This passage shows how exclusive psalmody advocates turned Watts’s own words against him. Rankin quotes Watts admitting the Psalms seem “foreign” to New Testament Christianity, then accuses Watts of preaching “another gofpel.” The argument rests on a key theological claim: that the Psalms, being inspired Scripture, cannot be superseded or improved upon. Those who find them unsuitable reveal their own spiritual blindness (“the carnal mind, which cannot difcern fpiritual things”). This polemic against Watts’s theological premises—not merely his hymns—helps explain why the controversy proved so intractable.