But, after more than half a century of work on the subject by scholars of half a dozen different nationalities and of every variety of political opinion, to deny that the phenomenon exists; or to suggest that, if it does exist, it is unique among human institutions, in having, like Melchizedek, existed from eternity or to imply that, if it has a history, propriety forbids that history to be disinterred, is to run wilfully in blinkers.
R H Tawney, Religion and the Rise of Capitalism