A marked tendency of the Reformation which it received from the Renaissance
was its acceptance of the free spirit of individualism. The Roman Church
had taught that all valid religious truth comes to mankind through its own
corporate existence, but the Reformers insisted that truth is the result of
individual insight and investigation. The Reformation magnified the worth
of personality, and made it the central force in all human effort.[2] To
gain a positive personal life, one of free initiative power, that may in
itself become creative, and capable of bringing truth and life to larger
issues, was the chief motive of the Protestant leaders in their work of
reformation. The result was that, wherever genuine Protestantism appeared,
it manifested itself by its attitude of free inquiry, its tendency to
emphasize individual life and thought, and its break with the traditions of
the past, whether in literature or in religion. The Reformation did not,
however, bring the principle of individuality to full maturity; and it
retained many of the old institutional methods, as well as a large degree
of their social motive. The Reformed churches were often as autocratic as
the Catholic Church had been, and as little inclined to approve of
individual departures from their creeds and disciplines; but the motive of
individualism they had adopted in theory, and could not wholly depart from
in practice.
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