No one would want to contend that the Protestant Reformation completely recovered the purity of faith and practice that is set forth in the Bible. The Reformers did not always agree among themselves. They were not always consistent in every area. The church did not all at once abandon every error of the Roman State-Church Dark Ages. But in spite of differences and inconsistencies, the Reformers were absolutely united on the importance of Scripture and justification by faith alone-their objective meaning and their absolute centrality in the Christian faith.
There is a tendency in sinful human nature to gravitate from the objective Gospel to religious subjectivism, to shift the central focus from Christ to Christian experience. This is what happened in the great “falling away” in the early Church. And the same evolution has taken place among the heirs of the Protestant movement.