Such was the origin of the Calvinistic psalmody, which holds so prominent a place in the history of religious culture, not from any artistic value in its products, but as the chosen and exclusive form of praise employed for the greater part of two centuries by the Reformed Churches of Switzerland, France, and the Netherlands, and the Puritan congregations of England, Scotland, and America. On the poetic side it sufficed for Calvin, for he said that the psalms are the anatomy of the human heart, a mirror in which every pious mood of the soul is reflected.
[362]
It is a somewhat singular anomaly that the large liberty given to the Lutheran Christians to express their religious convictions and impulses in hymns of their own spontaneous production or choosing was denied to the followers of Calvin. Our magnificent heritage of English hymns was not founded amid the Reformation struggles, and thus we have no lyrics freighted with the priceless historic associations which consecrate in the mind of a German the songs of a Luther and a Gerhardt. Efficacious as the Calvinistic psalmody has been in many respects, the repression of a free poetic impulse in the Protestant Churches of Great Britain and America for so long a period undoubtedly tended to narrow the religious sympathies, and must be given a certain share of responsibility for the hardness of temper fostered by the Calvinistic system. The reason given for the prohibition, viz., that only “inspired” words should be used in the service of praise, betrayed a strange obtuseness to the most urgent demands of the Christian heart in forbidding the very mention of Christ and the Gospel message in the song of his Church. In spite of this almost unaccountable self-denial, if such it was, we may, in the light of subsequent history, ascribe an appropriateness to the metrical versions of the psalms of which even Calvin could hardly have been aware. It was given to Calvinism to furnish a militia which, actuated by a different principle than the Lutheran repugnance to physical resistance, could meet political Catholicism in the open field and maintain its rights amid the shock of arms. In this fleshly warfare it doubtless drew much of its martial courage from those psalms which were ascribed to a bard who was himself a military chieftain and an avenger of blood upon his enemies.
[363]
The unemotional unison tunes to which these rhymed psalms were set also satisfied the stern demands of those rigid zealots, who looked upon every appeal to the aesthetic sensibility in worship as an enticement to compromise with popery. Before condemning such a position as this we should take into account the natural effect upon a conscientious and high-spirited people of the fierce persecution to which they were subjected, and the hatred which they would inevitably feel toward everything associated with what was to them corruption and tyranny.
We must, therefore, recognize certain conditions of the time working in alliance with the authority of Calvin to bring into vogue a conception and method of public worship absolutely in contradiction to the almost universal usage of mankind, and nullifying the general conviction, we might almost say the instinct, in favor of the employment in devotion of those artistic agencies by which the religious emotion is ordinarily so strongly moved. For the first time in the history of the Christian Church, at any rate for the first time upon a conspicuous or extensive scale, we find a party of religionists abjuring on conscientious grounds all employment of art in the sanctuary. Beginning in an inevitable and salutary reaction against the excessive development of the sensuous and formal, the hostility to everything that may excite the spirit to a spontaneous joy in beautiful shape and color and sound was exalted into a universally binding principle. With no reverence for the conception of historic development and Christian tradition, the supposed simplicity of the apostolic practice was assumed to be a constraining law upon all later generations. The Scriptures were taken not only as a [364] rule of faith and conduct, but also as a law of universal obligation in the matter of church government and discipline. The expulsion of organs and the prohibition of choirs was in no way due to a hostility to music in itself, but was simply a detail of that sweeping revolution which, in the attempt to level all artificial distinctions and restore the offices of worship to a simplicity such that they could be understood and administered by the common people, abolished the good of the ancient system together with the bad, and stripped religion of those fair adornments which have been found in the long run efficient to bring her into sympathy with the inherent human demand for beauty and order.
With regard to the matter of art and established form in public worship Calvinism was at one with itself, whether in Geneva or Great Britain. A large number of active Protestants had fled from England at the beginning of the persecution of Mary, and had taken refuge at Geneva. Here they came under the direct influence of Calvin, and imbibed his principles in fullest measure. At the death of Mary these exiles returned, many of them to become leaders in that section of the Protestant party which clamored for a complete eradication of ancient habits and observances. No inspiration was really needed from Calvin, for his democratic and anti-ritualistic views were in complete accord with the temper of English Puritanism. The attack was delivered all along the line, and not the least violent was the outcry against the liturgic music of the established Church. The notion held by the Puritans concerning a proper worship music was that of plain unison psalmody. [365] They vigorously denounced what was known as “curious music,” by which was meant scientific, artistic music, and also the practice of antiphonal chanting and the use of organs. Just why organs were looked upon with especial detestation is not obvious. They had played but a very incidental part in the Catholic service, and it would seem that their efficiency as an aid to psalm singing should have commended them to Puritan favor. But such was not the case. Even early in Elizabeth’s reign, among certain articles tending to the further alteration of the liturgy which were presented to the lower house of Convocation, was one requiring the removal of organs from the churches, which was lost by only a single vote. It was a considerable time, however, before the opposition again mustered such force. Elizabeth never wavered in her determination to maintain the solemn musical service of her Church. Even this was severe enough as compared with its later expansion, for the multiplication of harmonized chants and florid anthems belongs to a later date, and the ancient Plain Song still included a large part of the service. Neither was Puritanism in the early stages of the movement by any means an uncompromising enemy to the graces of art and culture. The Renaissance delight in what is fair and joyous, its satisfaction in the good things of this world, lingered long even in Puritan households. The young John Milton, gallant, accomplished, keenly alive to the charms of poetry and music, was no less a representative Puritan than when in later years, “fallen on evil days,” he fulminated against the levities of the time. It was the stress of party [366] strife, the hardening of the mental and moral fibre that often follows the denial of the reasonable demands of the conscience, that drove the Puritan into bigotry and intolerance. Gradually episcopacy and ritualism became to his mind the mark of the beast. Intent upon knowing the divine will, he exalted his conception of the dictates of that will above all human ordinances, until at last his own interpretations of Scripture, which he made his sole guide in every public and private relation of life, seemed to him guaranteed by the highest of all sanctions. He thus became capable of trampling with a serene conscience upon the rights of those who maintained opinions different from his own. Fair and just in matters in which questions of doctrine or polity were not involved, in affairs of religion the Puritan became the type and embodiment of all that is unyielding and fanatical. Opposition to the use of the surplice, the sign of the cross in baptism, the posture of kneeling at the Lord’s Supper, and antiphonal chanting, expanded into uncompromising condemnation of the whole ritual. Puritanism and Presbyterianism became amalgamated, and it only wanted the time and opportunity to pull down episcopacy and liturgy in a common overthrow. The antipathy of the Puritans to artistic music and official choirs was, therefore, less a matter of personal feeling than it was with Calvin. His thought was more that of the purely religious effect upon the individual heart; with the Puritan, hatred of cultured church music was simply a detail in the general animosity which he felt toward an offensive institution.
[367]
The most conspicuous of the agitators during the reign of Elizabeth was Thomas Cartwright, Margaret Professor of Divinity in the University of Cambridge, who first gained notoriety by means of public lectures read in 1570 against the doctrine and discipline of the established Church. The coarseness and violence of this man drew upon him the royal censure, and he was deprived of his fellowship and expelled from the University. His antipathy was especially aroused by the musical practice of the established Church, particularly the antiphonal chanting, “tossing the psalms from one side to the other,” to use one of his favorite expressions. “The devil hath gone about to get it authority,” said Cartwright. “As for organs and curious singing, though they be proper to popish dens, I mean to cathedral churches, yet some others also must have them. The queen’s chapel and these churches (which should be spectacles of Christian reformation) are rather patterns to the people of all superstition.”
The attack of Cartwright upon the rites and discipline of the Church of England, since it expressed the feeling of a strong section of the Puritan party, could not be left unanswered. The defence was undertaken by Whitgift and afterward by Richard Hooker, the latter bringing to the debate such learning, dignity, eloquence, and logic that we may be truly grateful to the unlovely Cartwright that his diatribe was the occasion of the enrichment of English literature with so masterly an exposition of the principles of the Anglican system as the Laws of Ecclesiastical Polity.