Abstract
Hymns are for us Dissenters what the liturgy is for the Anglican. They are the framework, the setting, the conventional, the traditional part of divine service as we use it. They are, to adopt the language of the liturgiologists, the Dissenting Use. That is why we understand and love them as no one else does. You have only to attend Anglican services to discover that the Anglican, though he can write a hymn, cannot use it. It does not fit the Prayer Book service.1
Bernard Lord Manning, The Hymns of Wesley and Watts (London: Epworth Press 1942) 133-4. It is therefore surprising to find the statement that hymns are “particularly associated with [the] Anglican church” under the entry “Hymn” in Michael Kennedy, The Oxford Dictionary of Music, 2nd edn, Oxford and New York: Oxford University Press 1994
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