This is nowhere more clearly illustrated than in the Reformation and its accompanying movements.

The ideas and aspirations animating the social, political, and intellectual revolt of the sixteenth century can each be traced back to, at least, the beginning of the fifteenth century, and in many cases farther still.
The way the German of Luther's time looked at the burning questions of the hour was not essentially different from the way the English Wyclifites and Lollards, or the Bohemian Hussites and Taborites viewed them.

There was obviously a difference born of the later time, but this difference was not, I repeat, essential.

The changes which, a century previously, were only just beginning, had, meanwhile, made enormous progress.
The disintegration of the material conditions of mediaeval social life was now approaching its completion, forced on by the inventions and discoveries of the previous half-century.

But the ideals of the mass of men, learned and simple, were still in the main the ideals that had been prevalent throughout the whole of the later Middle Ages.