the laity, and the use of a dead language in public worship. They also reduced the excessive
ceremonialism and ritualistic display which obscured the spiritual service.
But the impoverishment was compensated by a gain; the work of destruction was followed
by a more important and difficult work of reconstruction. This was the revival of primitive worship
as far as it can be ascertained from the New Testament, the more abundant reading of the Scriptures
and preaching of the cardinal truths of the gospel, the restoration of the Lord’s Supper in its original
simplicity, the communion in both kinds, and the translation of the Latin service into the vernacular
language whereby it was made intelligible and profitable to the people. There was, however, 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 strengthened 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.^621 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 missa 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 nothing 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 Te Deum, the Gloria in excelsis, the Benedictus, the
(^621) "Wenn ichs vermöchte," he says in his tract on the German Mass, January, 1526, "und die griechische und ebräische Sprache wäre
uns so gemein als die lateinischen und hätte so vielfeiner Musica und Gesangs als die lateinische hat, so sollte man einen Sonntag um
den andern in alten vier Sprachen, deutsch, lateinisch, griechisch und ebräisch, 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 a Latin
along with German hymns in public worship.