The Protestant Reformation played a vital role in shaping Western Europe from a religious perspective, but it can be argued that the resulting divergence from Christianity been equally important for the development of the political and economic climate of Western Europe. The adoption of Protestant beliefs would serve as a catalyst for the sharp rise of capitalist, mercantilist, and democratic thought and practice. The process by which democracy, capitalism, and to some extent nationalism and mercantilism could come to fruition is a multi-step path that begins with the Reformation and the Ninety-Five Theses of Martin Luther. By distinguishing the factors that led to widespread discontent with the Roman Catholic Church, a correlation can be found between the timing of the increase in individual wealth within a newly formed capitalist structure and the advent of Protestant beliefs. Furthermore, democratic politics is generally considered to increase with an increase in capitalist economic behavior, an increase in personal wealth, and good business conduct is often the result of fair and liberal representative government and vice versa. Increased capitalist economic behavior and democratic practices were further catalyzed by Western European geopolitics, the result of which led to the beginnings of nationalism, which ran parallel to and was heavily influenced by what Adam Smith called mercantilism. Protestantism differs from Catholicism on three points. important means that are commonly called; Scripture alone, faith alone and the “universal priesthood of believers”. The essence of these principles is the emphasis on the personal practice of one's religion and the attenuation of the power of a central ecclesial authority. Scripture alone attests to the importance of a... middle of paper ...... theory and practice common in Europe from the 16th to the 18th century that favored government regulation of a nation's economy, especially import and export. protectionism, with the aim of strengthening the power of a state at the expense of a rival national power. For Schmoller, mercantilism appeared essentially as “the construction of a state – the replacement of a local and territorial economic policy with that of the national state”. The mercantilist objective was "to create a national economy closed from the outside world, which could satisfy all the needs of its citizens by means of native labor and which, furthermore, by vigorous internal traffic, would mobilize the resources natural resources of the country as well as the natural resources of the country”. the labor power of each citizen in the service of the whole community...it was a system attempting to promote public welfare by linking, to a large extent, economic life to political norms.”