Early British Literature

I call it "the first 'standard' dictionary," I say it's the first to make extensive use of illustrative quotations, and I quote Allen Reddick's claim that "Johnson's Dictionary was the first to attempt . . . to determine its meanings according to word usage as it was encountered in the works of the authors in the language" — related to, but not exactly the same as, the first to include extensive illustrative quotations.

If it's possible to say anything uncontroversial about Johnson's prescriptivism, it would be that Johnson is more prescriptive than most modern lexicographers, but also less prescriptive than most of his contemporaries expected him to be. I'd remind you, though, that a dictionary needn't be prescriptive in its intentions to provide a definitive standard; it's possible to be authoritative without being authoritarian. The OED, perhaps the most thoroughly descriptive major dictionary ever completed, is today routinely used prescriptively. A search of LexisNexis or similar databases for the phrase "according to the Oxford English Dictionary" is instructive: linguistic scolds routinely turn to it for authoritative guidance on what's right and wrong, even though its editors from Murray through Simpson explicitly disavowed any such intention.

It did not free the mind from subservience to ancient authority.

They shifted authorities rather than dismissed them

The intellectuals of antiquity

were primarily interested in a happy, adequate, and efficient life here on earth. Hellenic philosophy was designed to teach man how to live successfully rather than how to die with the assurance of ultimate salvation.

Humanism directly and indirectly revived the pagan scale of virtues.

Erasmus

The first place must indeed be given to the authority of the Scriptures; but, nevertheless, I sometimes find some things said or written by the ancients, nay, even by the heathens, nay, by the poets themselves, so chastely, so holily, and so divinely, that I cannot persuade myself but that, when they wrote them, they were divinely inspired, and perhaps the spirit of Christ diffuses itself farther than we imagine; and that there are more saints than we have in our catalogue.

Another humanist trend which cannot be ignored was the rebirth of individualism

The leading intellectual trait of the era was the recovery, to a certain degree, of the secular and humane philosophy of Greece and Rome.

Individualism and the instinct of curiosity were vigorously cultivated. Honest doubt began to replace unreasoning faith.

the spirit of individualism to a certain degree incited the Protestant revolt, which, in theory at least, embodied a thorough application of the principle of individualism in religion.