This history of the Reformation has been written with the intention of describing a great religious movement amid its social environment. A History of the Reformation, in the author's opinion, must describe five distinct but related things — the social and religious conditions of the age out of which the great movement came; the Lutheran Reformation down to 1555, when it received legal recognition; the Reformation in countries beyond Germany which did not submit to the guidance of Luther; the issue of certain portions of the religious life of the Middle Ages in Anabaptism, Socinianism, and Anti-Trinitarianism; and, finally, the Counter-Reformation. The first volume describes the eve of the Reformation and the movement itself under the guidance of Luther, while in the second volume the author deals with the Reformation beyond Germany, with Anabaptism, Socinianism, and kindred matters which had their roots far back in the Middle Ages, and with the Counter-Reformation in the sixteenth century.
