The Reformation's Continuity With Earlier History

We've written a lot over the years about the Reformation's deepest roots, such as the Biblical and patristic ones. I want to quote John Davis concerning some examples of roots in the late medieval era, including among some individuals and groups who survived until the time of the Reformation.

His comments are relevant to a couple of controversies that have been getting a lot of attention in conservative Protestant circles in recent weeks. One of Joe Schmid's videos discussing his conversion to Roman Catholicism refers to how Protestantism supposedly "comes out of nowhere". Some of the responses to Gavin Ortlund's recent video on prayer to saints have suggested that nobody opposed the practice early on or that only Gnostics or similar sources did so. I've given many examples of church fathers and other pre-Reformation sources who were much more credible than Gnostics and agreed with Protestants in opposing prayer to saints and angels. See here. Since this post is focused on late medieval sources, see my discussions of the Waldensians here, the Lollards here, and the Hussites here. I'll be saying more about issues like these later this year, but, for now, here are some of Davis' comments:

"As more evidence comes to light, it appears that English Protestantism first flowered in areas having heterodox traditions [Lollards, etc.]. In the eighteenth century the Revd. John Lewis collected material for his Brief History of the English Anabaptists which included evidence of the Kentish and Norfolk sects, finding 'the Religion of the Protestants no Novelty'. Dr. Collinson has noted the Lollard antecedents underlying centres of Elizabethan Puritanism; the textile villages of the Stour Valley that sustained the Dedham Conference, and Cranbrook, the home of William Carder the weaver who had been the most important heretic of Archbishop Warham's persecution in 1511. In addition the Puritan leaders in London held cures in the part of the metropolis where the old Lollard conventicles had flourished, in particular St. Giles Cripplegate and All Hallows Honey Lane. Similarly, Dr. Thomson has summed up the legacy of later Lollardy as anti-sacerdotalism, anticlericalism, anti-papalism and puritanism....The Bohemian knights who waited upon Luther at Worms had behind them the influence of Hus, and the English reformers similarly had the tradition of Wyclif." (Heresy And Reformation In The South East Of England, 1520-1559 [Atlantic Highlands, New Jersey: Humanities Press Inc., 1983], 2-3, 27)

Those are just some examples among many more that could be cited. And the connections involve more than just groups like the Lollards and Hussites. There were significant sympathies with the Reformation even among some of the people who remained Roman Catholic after the Reformation began. On issues where an anti-Protestant consensus eventually formed in support of Roman Catholic belief prior to the Reformation, there were other people who disagreed with that consensus earlier, centuries before the Reformation (e.g., opposition to prayer to saints and angels and the veneration of images leading up to the Second Council of Nicaea and afterward).