Make a Joyful Grammatical Noise

Is anyone else bothered by the last line of Amazing Grace, “We’ve no less days to sing God’s praise/than when we first begun”? It should be either “than when we first began,” or “than when we had first begun,” which sounds silly. Are we a bunch of musical lemmings, automatically singing bad grammar just because the song’s been hymnalized and is therefore considered holy writ?

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