ABSTRACT
In the early sixteenth century there were no precedents for creating new churches. Protestantism, as its name implies, developed in reaction to what had gone before. Reformers were determined to get rid of inessential accretions to the faith, but disagreed about what these were. Some Protestants maintained that only abuses need be purged and that other Catholic customs could continue. Others insisted that anything not specifically affirmed in the Bible should be jettisoned. All appealed to the authority of the scriptures but interpreted them in different ways. New groups emerged as people developed new insights into aspects of the Bible, which they believed others had neglected at their peril. Just as today there are different schools of psychoanalytic thought, sharing common origins but deeply antagonistic to each other, so in the sixteenth century various brands of Protestantism developed differing in what they retained from the past and how they interpreted the Bible.
