From the Diet of Worms to the Augsburg Confession - James Aitken Wylie

accepted the privilege; when they were denied it,
they were content to die for the Gospel: they never
thought of combining to demand as a right the open
and unchallenged profession of their faith.
But the Reformation, by quickening and
evolving the social instinct in man, brought with it
a new order of things. It gave birth not merely to
regenerated individuals, like primitive Christianity,
but to regenerated societies. No doubt the Gospel
in the sixteenth century began where the Gospel in
the first century had begun, with the renewal even
of the individual; but it did not end there. It called
bodies corporate into being, it communicated to
them the idea of social rights, and supplied an
organization for the acquisition and the exercise of
these rights. The Reformation thus erected a
platform on which it was possible to develop a
higher civilization, and achieve a more perfect
liberty, than the human race had yet known. Even
leaving out of view the Christian graces, which
formed of course the basis of that civilization, the
civic virtues now shot up into a stature, and blazed
forth with a splendor, which far transcended
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