Quote: Lack of Missions During Reformation

I love the Reformation. And I'm grateful for the Reformers. But this a sad fact that, fortunately, was corrected in time by the Reformer's own focus on the supremacy and authority of the Scriptures.

One of the results of the Reformation,... which is
somewhat difficult of explanation, was the attitude of the
Protestant Church of the Reformation to missions during the
Reformation period (1517-1650). Having themselves been
emancipated from the superstitions and slavery of a false
doctrine and a harsh ecclesiastical government, it would be
thought most natural that the Reformers and those who followed
them should promptly turn their attention to spreading these
glad tidings among non-Christian peoples; but here a strange
anomaly is found in the fact that there had been hardly any
period, in the entire history of the Christian Church, so
destitute of any concerted effort to spread the gospel in
heathen lands [as] just this period of the Reformation.

... Alfred D. Mason (1855-1923), Outlines of Missionary
History [1912]