xtreme
divergence in theological opinion and by riots in various parts of the
Protestant world. The age was indeed one of ferment, so that the
foundations of society and of religion seemed threatened. The Reformers
turned to the state for protection against the Roman Church, and
ultimately as a refuge from anarchy, and they also returned to the
theology of the Fathers as their safeguard against heresy. Instead of
the simplicity of Luther's earlier writings, a dogmatic theology was
formed, and a Protestant ecclesiasticism established, indistinguishable
from the Roman Church in principle. The main difference was in the
attitude to the Roman allegiance and to the sacramentarian system. There
was thus by no means a complete return to the Bible as the sole
authority, but the Bible was taken as interpreted by the earlier creeds
and as worked into a doctrinal system by the scholastic philosophy. Thus
Protestantism also came to identify theology with the whole range of
human knowledge, and in its official forms it was as hostile to the
progress of science as was the Roman Church itself.

Many Protestants rebelled against this radical departure from the
principles of the Reformation and of Biblical Christianity. To them it
seemed the substitution of the authority of the Church for the authority
of a living experience and of intellectual adherence to theological
propositions for faith. The freedom of the individual was denied when
the state enforced religious conformity. Thus a struggle within
Protestantism arose, with persecutions of Protestants by Protestants.
Moreover, many failed to find the expression of their faith in the
official creed or in the established organization, and Protestantism
divided into many sects and denominations, founded upon special types of
religious experience or upon particular points in doctrine or in cult.
Thus Protestantism presents a wide diversity in comparison with the
regularity of the Roman Church. This we should expect indeed from its
insistence upon individual freedom; yet, notwithstanding certain notable
exceptions, amid the diversity there is a substantial unity, a unity
which in our day finds expression in common organizations for great
practical ends, for example in the "Bible Societies," "Tract Societies,"
the "Young Men's Christian Associations," "Societies of Christian
Endeavour," &c., which disregard denominational lines.

Christianity and the modern world.

The coming of the