Progress From the First to the Fourteenth Century - James Aitken Wylie

Chapter 1
Protestantism
THE History of Protestantism, which we
propose to write, is no mere history of dogmas. The
teachings of Christ are the seeds; the modern
Christendom, with its new life, is the goodly tree
which has sprung from them. We shall speak of the
seed and then of the tree, so small at its beginning,
but destined one day to cover the earth.
How that seed was deposited in the soil; how
the tree grew up and flourished despite the furious
tempests that warred around it; how, century after
century, it lifted its top higher in heaven, and
spread its boughs wider around, sheltering liberty,
nursing letters, fostering art, and gathering a
fraternity of prosperous and powerful nations
around it, it will be our business in the following
pages to show. Meanwhile we wish it to be noted
that this is what we understand by the
Protestantism on the history of which we are now
entering. Viewed thus — and any narrower view
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