§ 142.4. In the period immediately following, from A.D. 1560 to A.D. 1618, we meet with many poetasters who write on sacred themes in doggerel rhymes. Even those who are poets by natural endowment, and inspired with Divine grace, are much too prolific; but they have bequeathed to us a genuine wealth of beautiful church songs, characterized by healthful objectivity, childlike simplicity, and a singular power of appealing to the hearts of the great masses of the people. But a tendency already begins to manifest itself in the direction of that excessive subjectivity which was the vice of hymn-writers in the succeeding period; the doctrinal element too becomes more and more prominent, as well as application to particular circumstances and occasions in life; but the objective confession of faith is always still predominant. Among the sacred poets of this period the most important are Bartholmaus Ringwaldt, pastor in Brandenburg, who died in A.D. 1597, author of “’Tis sure that awful time will come;” Nicholas Selnecker, at last superintendent in Leipzig, who died in A.D. 1592, as Melanchthon’s scholar suspected at one time of Cryptocalvinism, but, after he had taken part in the composition of the Formula of Concord, the object of the most bitter hatred and constant persecution on the part of the Cryptocalvinists of Saxony: he wrote, “O Lord my God, I cry to Thee;” Martin Schalling, pastor at Regensburg and Nuremberg, who died in A.D. 1608, wrote, “Lord, all my heart is fixed on Thee;” Martin Böhme or Behemb, pastor in Lusatia, who died in A.D. 1621, author of “Lord Jesus Christ, my Life, my Light.” The series closes with Philip Nicolai, a violent and determined opponent of Calvinism, who was latterly pastor in Hamburg, and died in A.D. 1608. His vigorous and rhythmical poetry, with its deep undertone of sweetness, is to some extent modelled on the Song of Songs. He wrote “Awake, awake, for night is flying;” the chorale in Mendelssohn’s “St. Paul,” “Sleepers, wake, a voice is calling,” is a rendering of the same piece.—Continuation, § 159, 3.
§ 142.5. Chorale Singing.—The congregational singing, which the Reformation made an integral part of evangelical worship, was essentially a reproduction of the Ambrosian mode (§ 59, 5) in a purer form and with richer fulness. It was distinguished from the Gregorian style preeminently by this, that it was not the singing of a choir of priests, but the popular singing of the whole congregation. The name chorale singing, however, was still continued, and has come to be the technical and appropriate designation of the new mode. It is further distinguished from the Gregorian mode by this other characteristic, that instead of singing in a uniform monotone of simple notes of equal length, it introduces a richer rhythm with more lively modulation. And, finally, it is characterized by the introduction of harmony in place of the customary unison. But, on the other hand, the chorale singing may be regarded as a renewal of the old cantus firmus, while at the same time it sets aside the secular music style and the artificialities of counterpoint and the elaborate ornamentation with which the false taste of the Middle Ages had overlaid it. The congregation sang the cantus firmus or melody in unison, the singers in the choir gave it the accompaniment of a harmony. The organ during the Reformation age was used for support, and accompanied only in elaborate, high-class music. But the melody was pitched in a medium key, which as the leading voice was called Tenor. The melodies for the new church hymns were obtained, partly by adaptation of the old tunes for the Latin hymns and sequences, partly by appropriation of popular mediæval airs, especially among the Bohemian Brethren, partly also and mainly by the free use of the popular song tunes of the day, to which no one made any objection, since indeed the spiritual songs were often parodies of the popular songs whose airs were laid hold upon for church use. The few original melodies of this age were for the most part composed by the authors of the hymns themselves or by the singers, and were the outflow of the same inspiration as had called forth the poems. They have therefore been rarely equalled in impressiveness, spiritual glow, and power by any of the more artistic productions of later times. Acquaintance with the new melodies was spread among the people by itinerant singers, chorister boys in the streets, and the city cornet players. From the singers or those who adapted the melodies are to be distinguished the composers, who as technical musicians arranged the harmony and set it in a form suitable for church use. George Rhaw, precentor in Leipzig, afterwards printer in Wittenberg, and Hans Walter, choirmaster to the elector, both intimate friends of Luther, were amongst the most celebrated composers of their day. The evangelical church music reaches its highest point of excellence toward the end of the sixteenth century. The great musical composer, John Eccart, who was latterly choirmaster in Berlin, and died in A.D. 1611, was the most active agent in securing this perfection of his art. In order to make the melody clearer and more distinctly heard, it was transferred from the middle voice, the tenor, to the higher voice or treble. The other voices now came in as simple concords alongside of the melody, and the organ, which had now been almost perfected by the introduction of many important improvements, now came into general use with its pure, rich, and accurate full harmony, as a support and accompaniment of the congregational singing. The distinction too between singers and composers passed more and more out of view. The skilled artistic singing was thus brought into closer relations with the congregational singing, and the creative power, out of which an abundant supply of original melodies was produced, grew and developed from year to year.
§ 142.6. Theological Science.—Inasmuch as the Reformation had its origin in the word of God, and supported itself upon that foundation alone the theologians of the Reformation were obliged to give special attention to biblical studies. John Förster, who died in A.D. 1556, and John Avenarius, who died in A.D. 1576, both of Wittenberg, compiled Hebrew lexicons, which embodied the results of independent investigations. Matthias Flacius, in his Clavis Scr. s., provided what for that time was a very serviceable aid to the study of Scripture. The first part gives in alphabetical order an explanation of Scripture words and forms of speech, the second forms a system of biblical hermeneutics. Exegesis proper found numerous representatives. Luther himself beyond dispute holds the front rank in this department. After him the most important Lutheran exegetes of that age are for the New Testament, Melanchthon; Victorin Strigel, who wrote Hyponm. in Novum Testamentum; Flacius, with his Glossa compendiaria in Novum Testamentum; Joachim Camerarius, with his Notationes in Nov. Testamentum; Martin Chemnitz, with his Harmonia IV. Evangeliorum, continued by Polic. Leyser, and completed at last by John Gerhard: for the Old Testament, especially John Brenz, whose commentaries are still worthy of being consulted. Of less consequence are the numerous commentaries of the comprehensive order, compiled by the once scarcely less influential David Chytræus of Rostock, who died in A.D. 1600. The series of Lutheran dogmatists opens with Melanchthon, who published his Loci communes in A.D. 1521. Martin Chemnitz, in his Loci theologici, contributed an admirable commentary to Melanchthon’s work, and it soon became the recognised standard dogmatic treatise in the Lutheran church. In A.D. 1562 he published his Examen Conc. Trident., in which he combated the Romish doctrine with as much learning and thoroughness as good sense, mildness, and moderation. Polemical theology was engaged upon with great vigour amid the many internal and external controversies, conducted often with intense passion and bitterness. In the department of church history we have the gigantic work of the Magdeburg centuriators, the result of the bold scheme of Matthias Flacius.By his Catalogus testium veritatis he had previously advanced evidence to show that at no point in her history had the church been without enlightened and pious heroes of faith, who had carried on the uninterrupted historical continuity of evangelical truth, and so secured an unbroken succession from the early apostolic church till that of the sixteenth century.—Continuation, § 159, 4.
§ 142.7. German National Literature.—The Reformation occurred at a time when the poetry and national literature of Germany was in a condition of profound prostration, if not utter collapse. But it brought with it a reawakening of creative powers in the national and intellectual life of the people. Under the influence and stimulus of Luther’s own example there arose a new prose literature, inspired by a broad, liberal spirit, as the expression of a new view of the world, which led the Germans both to think and teach in German. It was mainly the intellectual friction from the contact of one fresh mind with another in regard to questions agitated in the Reformation movement that gave to the satirical writings of the age that brilliancy, point, and popularity which in the history of German literature was not attained before and never has been reached since. In innumerable fugitive sheets, in the most diverse forms of style and language, in poetry and prose, in Latin and German, these satires poured forth contempt and scorn against and in favour of the Reformation. As we have on the Catholic side Thomas Murner (§ [125, 4]), and on the Reformed side Nicholas Manuel (§ [130, 4]), so we have on the Lutheran side John Fischart, far excelling the former two, and indeed the greatest satirist that Germany has yet produced. To him we are mainly indebted for the almost incessant stream of anonymous satires of the sixteenth century. He belonged, like Sebastian Brandt and Thomas Murner, to Strassburg, was for a long time advocate at the royal court of justice at Spires, and died in A.D. 1589. His satirical vein was exercised first of all upon ecclesiastical matters: “The Night Raven (Rabe) and the Hooded Crow,” against a certain J. Rabe, who had become a Roman Catholic. “On the Pretty Life of St. Dominic and St. Francis,” an abusive effusion against the Dominicans and Francisans [Franciscan]. “The Beehive of the Romish Swarm,” the best known of all his satires, an independent and original working up of the theme of the book bearing the same name by Philip von Marnix (§ [139, 12]). “The Four-horned Bat of the Jesuits,” in rhyme, the most stinging, witty, and scathing satire which has ever been written against the Jesuits. Then he turned his attention to secular subjects. His “Beehive” may be regarded as a companion piece to Murner’s “Lutheran Buffoon;” but excelling this passionately severe production in spirit, wit, and bright, laughing sarcasm, it is as certain to win the pre-eminence and be awarded the victory. Among the secular poets of that century the shoemaker of Nuremberg, Hans Sachs, who died in A.D. 1576, an admirable specimen of the Lutheran burgher, holds the first rank. As a minstrel he is almost as unimportant as any of his contemporaries, but conspicuously excelling in the poetic rendering of many tales, legends, and traditions by his naïve drollery, honest good-heartedness, and fresh, lively vigour and style. He left behind him 208 comedies and tragedies, 1,700 humorous tales, 4,200 lays and ballads. He gave a bright and cheery greeting to the Reformation in A.D. 1523 in his poem, “The Wittenberg Nightingale,” and by this he also contributed very much to further and recommend the introduction of the teachings of the Reformation among his fellow citizens.
§ 142.8. For Missions to the Heathen very little was done during this period. The reason of this indeed is not far to seek. The Lutheran church felt that home affairs had the first and in the meantime an all-engrossing claim upon her attention and energies. She had not the call which the Roman Catholic church had, in consequence of political and mercantile relations with distant countries, to prosecute missions in heathen lands, nor had she the means for conducting such enterprises as those on which the monkish orders were engaged.Yet we find the beginnings of a Lutheran mission even in this early period, for Gustavus Vasa of Sweden founded, in A.D. 1559, an association for carrying the gospel to the neglected and benighted Lapps.[408]
§ 143. The Inner Development of the Reformed Church.
The close connection which all Lutheran national churches had obtained in their possession of one common confession was wanting to the Reformed church, inasmuch as there each national church had drawn up its own confession. The victory of Calvinistic dogmatic over the Zwinglian in the Swiss mother church (§ [138, 7]) was not without influence upon the other Reformed national churches; and Calvinism, partly in its entire stringency and severity, partly in a form more or less modified, without expressing itself in one common symbol, formed henceforth a bond of union and a common standard for attacks on Lutheran dogmatics. Quite similar was the origin of the divergence that arose between Zwinglianism and Calvinism in the department of the ecclesiastical constitution. In this case also the victory was with the Calvinistic organization. Its ideal embraced the restoration of the primitive apostolic presbyterial and synodal constitution, together with the church’s unconditional independence of the State. This proved much more acceptable than the theory which, under Zwingli’s auspices, had been adopted in German Switzerland, according to which church government and the administration of discipline were put in the hands of the Christian civil magistrates. A rigid system of ecclesiastical penitential discipline, however, was on all sides applied to the public and private lives of all church members. Under such discipline the community came generally to present a picture of singularly pure and correct morality, and not infrequently we see exhibited a remarkable development of high moral character. It fostered the noble confidence of the martyr spirit, which indeed only too often ran out into extremes and made an unjustifiable use of Old Testament precedents and patterns.—In reference to worship, the Reformed church, with its simplest possible form of service, stripped of all pomp and ceremony, presents the most thorough and marked contrast to the gorgeous and richly ceremonial worship of the Roman Catholic church.—Yet the episcopal Anglican national church (§ [139, 6]), in almost all particulars relating to constitution, worship, discipline, and customs, completely severed its connection with the distinctive characteristics of the Reformed church, and allied itself to the traditional forms and ceremonies of the Roman Catholic church. On the other hand, in reference to dogma it approaches in its mediating attitude nearer in several respects to the view of the Lutheran church. But all the more rigidly and exclusively did the Puritans who separated themselves from the Anglican church, as well as the strict Presbyterian church of Scotland, appropriate, and even carry out to further extremes, the rigorism of the Genevan model in regard both to worship and to doctrine.
§ 143.1. The Ecclesiastical Constitution.—Just as in the Lutheran church, the ecclesiastical leaders had been driven by necessity to submit to the so-called super-episcopate of the princes, it also happened here in German Switzerland that, under pressure of circumstances, this power, as well as church discipline and infliction of ecclesiastical censures, was put in the hands of the magistrates. By order of Zwingli and Œcolampadius there were founded in Zürich, in A.D. 1528, and in Basel in A.D. 1530, synods to be held yearly for church visitation. These were to be attended by all the pastors of the city and district, and one or more honourable men should be appointed from each congregation, in order to take up and dispose of any complaints that might be made against the life and doctrine of their pastors. But the intention of both reformers to give this institution a controlling influence in church government and ecclesiastical organization was thwarted in consequence of the jealousy with which the ruling magistrates clung to the authority that had been assigned them in ecclesiastical matters. In Geneva, on the contrary, Calvin’s unbending energy succeeded, after long and painful contendings (§ [138, 3], [4]), in transferring from the magistrates the government of the church, together with church discipline and the imposition of censures, to which here also they laid claim, to a consistory founded by him, composed of six pastors and twelve lay elders or presbyters, which was supreme in its own domain, and free from all interference on the part of the civil authorities, while the magistrates were bound to execute civil penalties upon those excommunicated by the ecclesiastical tribunal. The introduction of this presbyterial constitution into Reformed national churches of large extent must have contributed to their further extension and to the maintenance of the national church unity. At the head of each congregation now stood a presbytery, called in French consistoire, composed of pastor and elders, the latter having been chosen either directly by the congregation, or by the local magistrate in accordance with the votes of the congregation, subsequently they were also allowed to add to their own number. Then, again, the presbyters of a particular circuit were grouped into so-called classes, with a moderator chosen for the occasion; and then, also, an annual classical synod, consisting of one pastor and one lay elder chosen from each of the presbyteries.In a similar way, at longer intervals, or just as necessity called for it, provincial synods were convened, composed of deputies from several classical synods; and from its members were chosen representatives to the general or national synod, which constituted the highest legislative authority for the whole national church.[409]
§ 143.2. Public Worship.—Zwingli wished at first to do away with church bells, organ playing, and church psalmody, and even Calvin would not tolerate altars, crucifixes, images, and candles in the churches. These he regarded as contrary to the Divine law revealed in the decalogue, inasmuch as the commandment that properly stood second as a distinct and separate statute, though it had slipped out of the enumeration usual among the Catholics and Lutherans, was understood to forbid the use of images. The churches were reduced to bare and unadorned places for prayer and assembly rooms for preaching, and simple communion tables took the place of altars. Kneeling, as savouring of ceremonialism, was discountenanced; the breaking of bread was again introduced in the administration of the Lord’s Supper as forming an important part of the symbolism; private confession was abolished; exorcism at baptism, as well as baptism in emergencies as a necessary thing, was discontinued; the liturgy was reduced to simple prayers spoken, not sung, and from a literalist purism the usual Vater unser was changed into Unser Vater. The festivals were reduced to the smallest number possible, and only the principal Christian feasts were celebrated, Christmas, Easter, Pentecost; while the Sunday festival was observed with almost the Old Testament strictness of Sabbath keeping.—In securing the introduction of psalmody into the worship of the German Reformed church, John Zwick, pastor at Constance, who died in A.D. 1542, was particularly active. In A.D. 1536 he published a small psalmody, with some Bible psalms set to Lutheran melodies. At Calvin’s request, Clement Marot set a good number of the Psalms to popular French airs in A.D. 1541-1543; Beza completed it, and then Calvin introduced this French psalter into the church of Geneva. Claude Goudimel (§ [149, 15]) in A.D. 1562 published sixteen of these psalms with four-part harmonies. He was murdered in the massacre of St. Bartholomew at Lyons, in A.D. 1572. A professor of law at Königsberg, Ambrose Lobwasser, in A.D. 1573 made an arrangement of the Psalter in the German language after the style of Marot. This psalter, notwithstanding its poetical deficiencies, continued in use for a long time in Germany and Switzerland. Zwingli’s aversion to congregational singing was given effect to only in Zürich, but even there the service of praise was introduced by a decree of the council in A.D. 1598. In the other German Swiss cantons they did not confine themselves to the use of the Psalms, but adopted unhesitatingly spiritual songs by both Reformed and Lutheran poets. Among the former, who neither in number nor in ability could approach the latter, the most important were John Zwick and Ambrose Blaurer (§ [133, 3]).It was only in the seventeenth century that the Lutheran sister church abandoned her rigid adherence to the exclusive use of Lobwasser’s psalms in congregational singing, when the rise of Pietism, and afterwards the spread of rationalism, overcame this narrow-mindedness.[410]
§ 143.3. The English Puritans.—The Reformation under Elizabeth (§ [139, 6]), with its Lutheranizing doctrinal standpoint and Catholicizing forms of constitution and worship, had been sanctioned in A.D. 1559 by the Act of Uniformity in the exercise of the royal supremacy that was claimed over the whole ecclesiastical institutions of the country. But the Protestants who had fled from the persecutions of Bloody Mary and had returned in vast troops when Elizabeth ascended the throne brought with them from their foreign resorts, in Switzerland from Geneva, Zürich, Basel, in Germany from Strassburg, Frankfort, Emden, entirely different notions about the nature of genuine evangelical Christianity; and now with all the assumption of confessors they sought to have these ideas realized in their native land. Inspired for the most part with the rigorist spirit of the Genevan Reformation, they desired, instead of the royal supremacy, to have the independence of the church proclaimed, and instead of the hierarchical episcopal system a presbyterial constitution with strict church discipline, arranged in accordance with the Genevan model. They also gave a one-sided prominence to the formal principle of the Holy Scripture, adhered rigidly to the doctrinal theory of Calvin and to a mode of worship as bare as possible, stripped of every vestige of popish superstition, such as priestly dress, altars, candles, crucifixes, sign of the cross, forms of prayer, godfathers, confirmation, kneeling at the sacrament, bowing the head at the mention of the name of Jesus, bells, organs, etc. On account of their opposition to the Act of Uniformity, these were designated Nonconformists or Dissenters. They were also called Puritans, because they insisted upon an organization of the church purified from every human invention, and ordered strictly in accordance with the word of God. Their principles, which were enunciated first of all in private conventicles, found a very wide acceptance amongst ministers and people. This movement proved too strong to be suppressed, even by the frequent deprivation and banishment of the ministers, or the fining and imprisonment of their adherents. Amid the severity of persecution and oppression Puritanism continued to grow, and in A.D. 1572 numerous separatist congregations provided themselves with a presbyterial and synodal constitution; the former for the management of the affairs of particular congregations, the latter for the settlement of questions affecting the whole church. Specially offensive to the queen, and therefore strictly forbidden by her and rigorously suppressed, were the prophesyings introduced into many English churches after the pattern of the prophesyings of the church of Zürich.These were week-day meetings of the congregation, at which the Sunday sermons were further explained and illustrated from Scripture by the preachers, and applied to the circumstances and needs of the church of that day.[411]