Annotation CCCIV

”Singing, and making melody in your hearts.” — Ephesians 5:19

Whether song is to be used in the divine praises.

Jerome, [in] the third book on the epistle to the Ephesians, expounding these [words], seems to think, that in the temples the divine praises are not to be sung with musical voice; for he says: “LET THE young men hear these [things]; let those hear, whose office it is to make melody in the church, that [they must sing] to God not with the voice, but with the heart; nor are the throat and jaws, after the manner of tragedians, to be smeared with sweet medicament, so that theatrical strains and songs be heard in the church.” This sentence is reported in the Collectanea of the decrees, distinction 92, chapter 1: which the divine Thomas [Aquinas], in the Secunda Secundae, question 91, examining, thus says: “JEROME does not simply blame song, but reprehends those who sing in the church in a theatrical manner — not to excite devotion, but for the sake of ostentation, or to provoke delight. Whence Augustine, in the tenth [book] of the Confessions, says: ‘WHEN it befalls me, that the singing move me more than the thing which is sung, I confess that I sin penally; and then I would rather not hear the singer.’”