If the melody [of the Reformation] is still to ring out loudly, its key-signature is to be sought not so much in the inherent qualities of Protestantism (or Tridentine Catholicism) as in the dynamic interplay of forces conjured up by the Reformation era, and in the law of unintended consequences.
The most significant outcomes of the Reformation can in fact be expressed as the succession of paradoxes. The Reformations, Protestant and Catholic, someday the creation of social and religious uniformity, and ended up producing forms of pluralism... They promised to intensify the political and spiritual power of the state and yet they generated the grammar and vocabulary by which its authority can be challenged. They sought to eradicate heresy and false belief, but falteringly permitted the toleration of error to a previously undreamt-of degree. They set up to sacralize the whole of society, and ended up creating the long term conditions for its secularization.
Peter Marshall, The Reformation, A Very Short Introduction, p. 133
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