486 THE GERMAN REFORMATION. A.D. 1517 To 15380.
ever, much crude experimenting and changing until a new order of worship could be fairly established.
Uniformity in worship is neither necessary nor desirable, according to Protestant principles. The New Testament does not prescribe any particular form, except the Lord’s Prayer, the words of institution of the Lord’s Supper, and the baptismal formula.
The Protestant orders of worship differ widely in the extent of departure from the Roman service, which is one and the same everywhere. The Lutheran Church is conservative and liturgical. She retained from the traditional usage what was not inconsistent with evangelical doctrine; while the Reformed churches of the Zwinglian and Calvinistic type aimed at the greatest simplicity and spirituality of worship after what they supposed to be the apostolic pattern. Some went so far as to reject all hymns and forms of prayer which are not contained in the Bible, but gave all the more attention to the Psalter, to the sermon, and to extemporaneous prayer. The Anglican Church, however, makes an exception among the Reformed communions: she is even more conservative than the Lutheran, and produced a liturgy which embodies in the choicest English the most valuable prayers and forms of the Latin service, and has maintained its hold upon the reverence and affection of the Episcopal churches to this day. They subordinate preaching to worship, and free prayer to forms of prayer.
Luther began to reform public worship in 1523, but with caution, and in opposition to the radicalism of Carlstadt, who during the former’s absence on the Wartburg had tumultuously abolished the mass, and destroyed the altars and pictures. He retained the term “ mass,” which came to signify the whole public service, especially the eucharistic sacrifice. He tried to save the truly Christian elements in the old order, and to reproduce them in the vernacular language for the benefit of the people. His churchly instincts were strength-
§ 80. REFORMATION OF PUBLIC WORSHIP. 487
ened by his love of poetry and music. He did not object even to the use of the Latin tongue in the Sunday service, and expressed an impracticable wish for a sort of pentecostal Sunday mass in German, Latin, Greek, and Hebrew.' At the same time he desired also a more private devotional service of converted Christians, with the celebration of the holy communion (corresponding to the missa fidelium of the ante- Nicene Church, as distinct from the mssa catechumenorum), but deemed it impossible for that time from the want of the proper persons; for “we Germans,” he said, “are a wild, rough, rabid people, with whom ee can be done except under the pressure of necessity.”
So he confined himself to provide for the public Sunday service. He retained the usual order, the Gospels and Epistles, the collects, the Ze Deum, the Gloria in excelsis, the Benedictus, the Creed, the responses, the kneeling posture in communion, even the elevation of the host and chalice (which he afterwards abandoned, but which is still customary in the Lutheran churches of Scandinavia), though without the adoration. He omitted the canon of the mass which refers to the priestly sacrifice, and which, since the sixth century, contains the kernel of the Roman mass, as an unbloody repetition of the crucifixion and miraculous transformation of the elements.?
He had previously rejected this “ horrible canon,” as he calls
1 ** Wenn ichs vermochte,”’ he says in his tract on the German Mass, January, 1526, ‘‘ und die griechische und ebridische Sprache ware uns so gemein als die lateinische, und hatte so viel feiner Musica und Gesangs als die lateinische hat, so sollte man einen Sonntag um den andern in allen vier Sprachen, deutsch, lateinisch, griechisch und ebrdisch, Messe halten, singen, und lesen.’’ Such a polyglot service was never even attempted except at the Propaganda in Rome. Melanchthon (Apol. Conf. Aug., art. XXIV.) defends the use of Latin along with German hymns in public worship.
2 The canon misse (‘‘ Te igitur,’’ ete.), embraces five or six prayers bearing upon the consecration and the offering of Christ’s body. It begins with an intercession for the Pope and all orthodox Catholics. Janssen says (III. 64): ‘* In der Messe liess Luther den Canon, den Kern und das Wesen der katholischen Messe, fort,’ and unfairly adds: ‘‘ Das Volk jedoch sollte dieses nicht wissen.’’ As if Luther were the man to deceive the people!