Category Archives: Worship

Presbyterianism = the haunting fear someone somewhere might hear unmediated Scripture?

From James Hastings Nichols, Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition, p. 102-103.

“Lecturing” was a running exposition of Scripture and was especially popular through the system of Puritan [i.e. not Presbyterian] “lectureships,” of endowed preaching posts outside the regular benefices.  The Directory permitted lecturing, but specified that Scripture was to be expounded, it should wait till the end of the chapter.  What was merely permissive soon became general practice.  The minister added an expository “lecture” to his reading of Scripture in addition to the sermon.  The Scots Assembly had to set the hour for morning worship half an hour earlier to accomodate the additional time added by the “lecturing.”

Scottish Episcopalians were better Presbyterians in worship

From James Hastings Nichols, Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition, p. 109.

…in most cases the legatees of the Westminster Assembly Puritans did not care to maintain the full prescriptions of the Directory.  The anti-liturgical current moved most of them still farther to the left.  Perhaps the most faithful exponents of the Directory after the Restoration were the Episcopalian minority in Scotland, who were distinguished, not by the Anglican prayer book, which they did not follow, but by their use of the Lord’s Prayer, the Creed, and the “Glory be to the Father” in a service modeled on the Westminster Directory.  The Church of Scotland itself had by the end of the century come close to the position maintained by the Congregationalists against the Presbyterians at the Westminster Assembly.  Presbyterians generally gave up the liturgical use of the Lord’s Prayer, despite the recommendations of the Directory, and adopted the Congregationalist fear of the uncommented reading of Scripture.  And eighteenth-century Scottish Presbyteians could get into trouble for following the instructions in the Directory as to reading Scripture and using the Lord’s Prayer.  Even metrical psalmody suffered.  The custom of “lining out,” conceded by the Directory in cases “where many in the congregation cannot read,” became the normal practice in Scotland and America in Presbyterian and Congregational churches.

Huguenot Psalmody and Illegal Whistling

Many of these melodies are very vigorous. This is often not recognized, because in many traditions the tunes are sung slowly, and often with simplified rhythm. However, in their original rhythms, at a brisk ‘folk-song’ tempo, some can be hair-raising, such as Psalms 2, 47, 99, or 148. It was not for nothing that Queen Elizabeth disdained them as “Genevan jigs.” Psalm 68 was sung by the French Calvinists (Huguenots) going into battle. This association became so strong that in certain places even whistling the tune was outlawed.

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Huguenots v. Puritans

From James Hastings Nichols, Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition, p. 109.

Some measure of the revolution effected by the Puritan movements in Reformed worship can be seen in the contrast with the French experience.  When the storm troopers of the Counter-Reformation drove the Huguenots by the thousands into exile abroad in the 1680’s, many were brought into contace with the churches of England and her American colonies.  Although they were scarcely prepared to accept the Arminianism introduced by the court into Anglicanism in the 1620’s and [that was] virtually official since the Restoration, they found the worship of the English Presbyterians and Congregationalists equally alien.  In worship, the Book of Common Prayer seemed closer to the Calvinist heritage than did anti-liturgical Puritanism.

Congregational Psalmody in the Huguenot Church

From James Hastings Nichols, Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition, pp. 58, 59.

The Huguenots quite caught Calvin’s concept of congregational psalmody.  It became their hallmark, in homes, in corporate worship, or on the battlefield.  The French Discipline required all to own and bring their liturgical psalters, and to share in the singing.  The synods took the sung prayers very seriously.  Figeac censured the practice of lining out (1579).  Rochelle censured those who did not sing in service (1581).  Synods o fthe early seventeenth century required the use of the whole psalm and ruled against the use of one or two stanzas only.  They were not strictly held to the psalms.  Beza had introduced some hymns and these were authorized by the synod of Montpellier (1598).  However, in general, little but psalms were sung in the sixteenth- and seventeenth-century French Reformed Church.

Huguenot Psalter in Martyrdom and Resistance

From James Hastings Nichols, Corporate Worship in the Reformed Tradition, pp. 38-40

As the staple of private and family  as well as of the services of the church, the psalms became known to many by heart.  No other book of the Old Testament, at least, could rival the psalms in the affections and knowledge of the Reformed laymen.  Ministers frequently preached from the Psalms also; the psalter was the only Old Testament book on which Calvin preached on Sundays.  For every occasion, it seems, an appropriate verse would leap to the tongue of a Huguenot.  And all over France, wherever Huguenots of the first generation were confined, often sometimes by the score, guards and jailers became familiar with the psalms, even to prisons on Santo Domingo and Martinique.  The colporteurs who carried the psalters, with Bibles and catechisms, all over France, were frequently caught and burned. Many martyrs died with the words of the Apostles’ Creed, but it is surprising to see what a range of the psalter was drawn on by others.

The courage and joy of these martyrs who, like the ancient Christians, could have had release for a word, won converts among the onlookers.  The authorities tried gags, but the cord would burn and from out of the smoke the psalm would again begin.  The bishops then ordered that the tongues of the Huguenots should be cut out before they were burned.  This became the general practice.  At Orange, peices were torn from the Bible and psalters and forced into the mouths and wounds of the victims.  “Eat your fill; tell your God to come rescue you.”

When the fifty-seven Protestants of Meaux were led off to the dungeon they lamented (to use a modern English version [I’m using the ESV–MH]):

O God, the nations have come into your inheritance;
they have defiled your holy temple;
they have laid Jerusalem in ruins.
They have given the bodies of your servants
to the birds of the heavens for food,
the flesh of your faithful to the beasts of the earth.

The fourteen of them who were later led out to execution sang on from the same psalm until their tongues were cut out:

Why should the nations say,
“Where is their God?”
Let the avenging of the outpoured blood of your servants
be known among the nations before our eyes!
Let the groans of the prisoners come before you;
according to your great power, preserve those doomed to die!

When Armed resistance began, Psalm 68 became the “Huguenot Marseillaise”[vv 1-2]:

God shall arise, his enemies shall be scattered;
and those who hate him shall flee before him!
As smoke is driven away, so you shall drive them away;
as wax melts before fire,
so the wicked shall perish before God!

At the battle of Coutras, the Reformed soldiers knelt and prayed and sang.  Roman Catholic courtiers, observing, cried out that they were afraid and were confessing, but a more experienced officer said it was not so.  They were singing [Psalm 118.24-25]:

This is the day that the Lord has made;
let us rejoice and be glad in it.
Save us, we pray, O Lord!
O Lord, we pray, give us success!

To know and love the psalms was the mark of the Protestant.  The use of the psalter became a significant issue in the long nibbling away of the assurances of the Edict of Nantes.  In 1623 singing of psalms was forbidden in the streets and shops.  In 1657 it was prohibited at executions; in 1658, anywhere outside “temples,” as Protestant places of worship must be called.  In 1659 psalms could not even be sung privately if audible outside, and in 1661 the singing of psalms anywhere in French territory became a felony.