The Singing Church: The Hymns It Wrote and Sang

by Edmund S. Lorenz

II. CALVIN’S FOLLOWERS MORE EXTREME

Human nature being what it is, it was inevitable that Calvin’s followers should carry his ideas to an extreme, and mechanically add the conclusion that hymns independent of the lyrics of the Scriptures should be forbidden.

While Luther stressed the Biblical content of the hymns and exalted the Psalms as the source of religious lyrical impulses, Calvin and his disciples added a rigid and almost superstitious regard for the mere form of the Scripture lyrics. They accepted their distortion and mutilation in giving them a metrical form as justified by the congregational necessity, and by the evident devotional results among the people.