What separated the Catholic and the Protestant was not merely a question of
socialism as against individualism,[4] but it was also a problem of outward
or inward law, of environment or intuition as the source of wholesome
teaching, of ritualism or belief as the higher form of religious
expression. The Protestants held that belief is better than ritual, faith
than sacraments, inward authority than external force. They insisted that
the individual has a right to think his own thoughts and to pray his own
prayer, and that the revelation of the Supreme Good Will is to all who
inwardly bear God's image and to every one whose will is a centre of new
creative force in the world of conduct. They affirmed that the individual
is of more worth than the social organism, the soul than the church, the
motive than the conduct, the search for truth than the truth attained.

These tendencies of Protestantism found expression in the rationalism that
appeared in England at the time of the Commonwealth, and especially at the
Restoration. All the men of broader temper proclaimed the use of reason in
the discussion of theological problems. In their opinion the Bible was to
be interpreted as other books are, while with regard to doctrines there
must be compromise and latitude. We find such a theologian as Chillingworth
recognizing "the free right of the individual reason to interpret the
Bible."[5] To such men as Milton, Jeremy Taylor, and Locke the free spirit
was essential, even though they had not become rationalists in the modern
philosophical sense. They were slow to discard tradition, and they desired
to establish the validity of the Bible; but they would not accept any
authority until it had borne the test of as thorough an investigation as
they could give it. The methods of rationalism were not yet understood, but
the rational spirit had been accepted with a clear apprehension of its
significance.

[Sidenote: Toleration.]