"Nor was he [Luther] performing an unusual act [posting his '95 theses' on the church door in Wittenberg]. ... it was common practice for clerics to start a debate in this fashion. [p. 4]
"Luther's hope of reform might have foundered like many others of the previous 200 years, had it not been for the invention of printing." [p. 4]
"He 'only wanted to elicit the truth about the sacrament of penance.' An innocent question ...." [p. 5]
"... institutional self-reform is rare; the conscience is willing, but the culture is tough." [p. 6]
"How a revolution erupts from a commonplace event ... is cause for endless astonishment. Neither Luther in 1517 nor the men who gathered at Versailles in 1789 intended at first what they produced at last. Even less did the Russian Liberals who made the revolution of 1917 foresee what followed." [p. 7]
"The seizure by Henry VIII of England's abbeys and priories, openly in the name of reform and morality, is notorious. But this secularizing of church property went on during the 16C in every other country except Italy and Spain." [p. 8]
"In this and other signs of resistance to the pope one detects the feelings of secular rulers against the religious, the antogonism of local authority toward central, and now a heightened sense of German nationhood that fretted at 'foreign' demands." [p. 9]
"A torrent of black-on-white wordage about the true faith and the good society poured over the Christian heads." [p. 10]
"It does not do to be grim about 'big things without remedy." [p. 19]