ABSTRACT
Protestantism desired to reform the Church as a whole, and was only forced against its will to set up Churches of its own. These became national Churches simply because Protestantism could only realize its ideal of the Church with the aid of governmental authority, and therefore had to be content not to apply it beyond the national frontiers. Protestantism did away with the two different planes of Christian morality, by means of which the old Church had effected a compromise between the demands of secular morality and the Early-Christian ethic, with its indifference towards this world and direction towards the other. The applicability of religious standards to the whole body, the exclusion or, at least, disfranchisement of unbelievers and heretics, the principle of intolerance and infallibility, are for it also self-evident necessities.
