Great Voices of the Reformation: An Anthology (The Modern Library of the World's Best Books, ML Giant G9)

xxx, 546 pp. Edited with an introduction and commentaries by Harry Emerson Fosdick. This anthology endeavors to present, within the limits of a single volume, the major emphases of Protestant thought from John Wycliffe to John Wesley. The term "Protestant" -for a brief discussion of which the reader may turn to the Epilogue-originated long after Wycliffe, and by Wesley's time had far outgrown its first meaning, but no other word is now available to connote the entire movement of thought and life which led up to and followed the dissevering of Christendom in the sixteenth century. The negative significance of the word in present usage, however, is unfortunate, for, as this anthology should make evident, while the Reformation certainly involved protest against Roman Catholicism, it was at heart an affirmation, a vigorous protestation of positive principles.