Men have asserted that the Renaissance inaugurated a period of paganism.
They have gloried that there supervened upon this paganism the religious
revival which the Reformation was. Even these men will, however, not
deny that it was the intellectual rejuvenation which made the religious
reformation possible or, at all events, effective. Nor can it be denied
that after the Revolution, in the Protestant communities the
intellectual element was thrust into the background. The practical and
devotional prevailed. Humanism was for a time shut out. There was more
room for it in the Roman Church than among Protestants. Again, the
Renaissance itself had been not so much an era of discovery of a new
intellectual and spiritual world. It had been, rather, the rediscovery
of valid principles of life in an ancient culture and civilisation. That
thorough-going review of the principles at the basis of all relations of
the life of man, which once seemed possible to Renaissance and
Reformation, was postponed to a much later date. When it did take place,
it was under far different auspices.

There is a remarkable unity in the history of Protestant thought in the
period from the Reformation to the end of the eighteenth century. There
is a still more surprising unity of Protestant thought in this period
with the thought of the mediæval and ancient Church. The basis and
methods are the same. Upon many points the conclusions are identical.
There was nothing of which the Protestant scholastics were more proud
than of their agreement with the Fathers of the early Church. They did
not perceive in how large degree they were at one with Christian
thinkers of the Roman communion as well. Few seem to have realised how
largely Catholic in principle Protestant thought has been. The
fundamental principles at the basis of the reasoning have been the same.
The notions of revelation and inspiration were identical. The idea of
authority was common to both, only the instance in which that authority