Читать книгу Unbelievers: An Emotional History of Doubt - Alec Ryrie - Страница 16

Catholics and Protestants wrote about one another as if they were different species. The reality was much more frightening. They were the same people, and they were liable to convert from one to the other. Every Protestant of the first generation had been raised a Catholic. Battle lines hardened thereafter, but conversions in all directions continued. The Reformation offered believers a religious choice. Most did not want such a thing and stuck to the faith in which they had been raised, but even that was a choice. For Christians who had grown up knowing that choosing is what heretics do, to be forced to choose was itself profoundly disturbing.