There are various causes for reform to take place in history. One is the preaching of the gospel of grace, in which, God raised men to undertake this leading task. There were also remote and external causes by which the work was prepared to make its execution easier. Houghton nailed it to “God’s method of governing the realm of nature, the Sovereign, the Omnipotent, works out His purposes in all their tremendous intricacy through cause and effect, and he applies the same method in matters that concern salvation and His Church.”
Martin Luther is not only known as the leader of the Reformation but also the first evangelical hymnist. Apart from John Calvin, Luther was one of the primary theologians of the Protestant Reformation. Regarding his accomplishments as a reformer, Bailey sums up succinctly in these words, “He established the Protestant Church in Germany as Lutheran; he gave the people in their own language the Bible, the Catechism and the Hymnbook so that God might speak directly to them in His Word, and that they might directly answer Him in their songs.” Luther’s Bible and Luther’s hymns gave life not only to the churches of the Reformation, but to German nationality and the German language.
John Calvin was born in Noyon (France) and studied Latin and theology at the University of Paris and law at Orleans. In 1532, he got into trouble with the Roman Catholic Church by reviving the ancient texts with the publication of Seneca’s De Clementia. Calvin took refuge in Basel, and in 1536 issued the famous handbook of Reformed theology, the Institutes of the Christian Religion. During one of his travel through Geneva (Switzerland), he was offered employment as teacher of Scripture by the city council.
Ulrich Zwingli (1484-1531), the third great reformer had the most puzzling form of congregational singing in his definition of musical practice. Although Zwingli was a cultivated person who had some skill in music and had high regard for art, he rejected all forms of music in worship, a fact that must be seen in close relationship to his concept of worship. Gebauer in the highly acclaimed volume of Key Words in Church Music remarks,
Another group which is associated with the Reformation is the one known as the Anabaptist. The exact origins of this group are rather obscure, for their roots could be traced back to many years before the Reformation began. The derisive term “Anabaptists” applied to those who rebaptized persons who became Christians as adults and felt that infant baptism was not scriptural.
