Although Morley espoused the Catholic faith for much of his life, he composed not only Catholic motets but also music for the Anglican rite, including three services, at least six anthems and a set of Burial Sentences. The verse anthem Out of the deep is a fine early example of the genre while the seven movements of his important First Service include both full and verse settings.

The simple directness of Teach me thy way, 0 Lord, with its characteristic Elizabethan-type cadences, suggests that it is an early work written, with the relatively modest resources of a provincial choir in mind, while Morley was still at Norwich. This is borne out by its survival only in East Anglian sources: it was copied into partbooks at Peterhouse, Cambridge by John Amner (Organist of nearby Ely Cathedral between 1610-41) and it is also found in a tenor book at Ely Cathedral. There are no grounds for accepting the statement in the Ely source that the anthem was intended for the Second Sunday after Epiphany.

Morley's setting, to a metrical text, of The Lord's Prayer appeared, together with four of his metrical psalm-tune harmonisations, in William Barley's The Whole Rooke of Psalms, published under Morley's own music-printing monopoly in 1599 and republished in Thomas Ravenscroft's similarly titled collection of 1621. All five pieces are woven around a so-called 'Church Tune' in the tenor. An earlier working, by John Farmer, of the same 'Lords's Prayer' tune - hence the similarity between this setting and Morley's - had appeared in Thomas East's popular The Whole Rooke of Psalmes first published in 1592. In the present performing edition, the familiar modern prose version of the text has been substituted for the original metrical one; in this form it may be incorporated in modern-day performances of Morley's Responses as well as similar 'Tudor' settings.