Richard,
Thank you much for the notes brother. I was aware of a number of the things you mentioned, though some of it I was unaware of. I have updated the webpage with a number of your suggestions and made some further qualifications, though some of your points I do not have time or desire to debate.
Do you have a English link or reference for the Fourth Council of Toledo 663 so that I can look it over?
Thanks brother!
Travis, I am sure that you want your site to be good quality, but when referring to historical sources it is difficult to maintain a high standard.
I cannot point you to a English translation for the Fourth Council, but I have found that you can get close by using schoolboy Latin plus an online Latin-English translator on the Latin link:-
http://www.benedictus.mgh.de/quellen/chga/chga_046t.htm
There is an English summary at:-
http://www.biblicalcyclopedia.com/T/toledo-councils-of.html
This article calls the fourth council the eighth but safer to go off the dates, ie 633 council. There seems to be no convention for numbering the councils, which initially confused me.
One other note. On the quote from James Good there is a sentence which I have underlined that seems to be missing:-
James I. Good, The Origin of the Reformed Church in Germany (1887), ‘Final Conclusion’, p. 453
“The Reformed in many places closed organs, and introduced the singing of the psalms into the churches. Many of the old hymn books contained nothing but psalms,
although others added hymns to the psalms. But the psalms constituted the basis and center of the book, and not the church year, which was generally unnoticed in the hymn books. These psalms sustained the Reformed in persecution and linked their hearts more fully to God’s Word.”
I firmly believe that it is worth the effort of checking original sources. I have been surprised at how many Reformed writers have quoted inaccurately on the subject of the history of worship. I do not know why this is, but it has happened often enough that I usually check the source if I can. The accuracy of quotations is only one problem. Another is the conclusions that are drawn from the facts.
To illustrate my point consider the following:-
Bushell is clearly uncomfortable with the fact that Calvin sang the Apostle's Creed. Bushell's section on Calvin using the Apostle's Creed says that the Geneva Psalter never included a hymn. He then admits that there were scripture songs, but omits the fact that the Ten Commandments were sung, which is not a scripture song. He tries to deal with the problem that Calvin sang the Apostle's Creed by suggesting that Calvin was caught up in a common misconception as outlined by Schaff. (The quote from Schaff is on p37, not p22 as Bushell asserts.) It is clear that Calvin did not regard the Creed as scripture and yet sang it, a fact which Bushell describes as “unfortunate”. Calvin does not fit Bushell's mold of an exclusive psalmist. Calvin seems very close, in terms of practice, but not quite as close as Bushell would like.
“The Apostles’ Creed was thus seen by Calvin as having Apostolic sanction, if not authority, and as deriving directly from the Apostolic age, if not from the hands of the Apostles themselves. It was in his view a creed that had the honor and respect attending its use in the Church for some 1,500 years. Should we then be surprised to find that Calvin included a metrical version of such a creed in his psalter? It is unfortunate that he did so, but we can certainly see reasons for his having done so, which ultimately have nothing to do with whether the Apostles’ Creed is inspired. Certainly there is a wide difference between the inclusion of such a creed in the psalter and the inclusion of contemporary hymns, which is something that Calvin never did…. the final and complete version of the Genevan Psalter (1562) did not contain a metrical version of the Apostles’ Creed. Whatever reasons Calvin had for including the creed in the first place, he evidently changed his mind.” (Michael Bushell “Songs of Zion”)
I think Bushell puts a good case for why Calvin held the Apostles Creed in great respect, and he is correct in claiming that the Apostles Creed was not in the 1562 Psalter. (He does not mention its inclusion of the Ten Commandments). My concern is that he concludes from this that Calvin changed his mind. This is certainly a possibility. But Sherman Isbell, quoting Garside, has said, Calvin was constrained by the Council in Geneva, and so the Strasbourg Psalter was more representative of Calvin's thought. So Isbell is dealing with the same facts, but drawing different conclusions.
A similar problem occurs with recounting the history of the Dutch synods dealing with what should be sung in worship. The early synods, 1578, 1581, 1586, seem to be taking a strong line on restricting worship to the 150 Psalms. But the 1618 Synod adds versifications of the Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Twelve Articles of Faith, and the Songs of Mary, Zacharias and Simeon. When I first read these I thought that it showed that the churches were moving toward hymnody. If you read the following links a different picture emerges.
http://heidelblog.net/2014/09/the-long-struggle-to-reform-dutch-reformed-worship/
http://www.clarionmagazine.ca/archives/2003/105-132_v52n5.pdf
The picture is of decreasing hymnody, which you do not get from the synod decisions. Again, it is easy to draw a conclusion from a few facts, and that conclusion may not be right.
Even the use of the word “Psalter” needs careful checking. The word sounds as if it is a book containing only the 150 Psalms. But the Genevan Psalter and others contained other songs. Similarly a “psalm” can have a more or less restricted meaning. Working out what the writer meant always needs investigation. I hope you can make a good quality list of historical quotes but it looks like a lot of work to me.
Your history of the Dutch and Dutch-origin churches finishes with the CRC in 1932. You could note that there are churches in the Netherlands as well as HNRC, NRC, FRC and PRC in the USA that still have church orders that contain the original 1618 Synod list of 150 Psalms plus Ten Commandments, the Lord’s Prayer, the Twelve Articles of Faith, and the Songs of Mary, Zacharias and Simeon. There are minor variations from the list, but most would consider these churches to be psalm-singing churches who have maintained the 500 year-old psalm-singing tradition of Calvin.
