Side by side with this political individualism went a religious and moral individualism. The metaphysical doctrine of the superiority of the species to the individual, of the permanent universal to the changing particular, was the philosophic support of political and ecclesiastical institutionalism. The universal church was the ground, end and limit of the individual's beliefs and acts in spiritual matters, just as the feudal hierarchical organization was the basis, law and fixed limit of his behavior in secular affairs. The northern barbarians had never completely come under the sway of classic ideas and customs. That which was indigenous where life was primarily derived from Latin sources was borrowed and more or less externally imposed in Germanic Europe. Protestantism marked the formal breaking away from the domination of Roman ideas. It effected liberation of individual conscience and worship from control by an organized institution claiming to be permanent and universal. It cannot truly be said that at the outset the new religious movement went far in promoting freedom of thought and criticism, or in denying the notion of some supreme authority to which individual intelligence was absolutely in bonds. Nor at first did it go far in furthering tolerance or respect for divergency of moral and religious convictions. But practically it did tend to disintegration of established institutions. By multiplying sects and churches it encouraged at least a negative toleration of the right of individuals to judge ultimate matters for themselves. In time, there developed a formulated belief in the sacredness of individual conscience and in the right to freedom of opinion, belief and worship.