I would beg to differ. When the first reformers (Luther, Calvin, Zwingli) came along they opened the floodgates to many who picked up the idea of "I can read the Bible and come to my own conclusion" and you have a cacophony of different opinions voiced
The additional point was that these different opinions could get equal sanction as being self-interpretation, which did happen in Swedenborg's case.
I would not classify the Swedenborgians as Protestants, note, but I point out that they are the product of a thought that one can come up with one's own interpretation of the Bible and it is equally valid
in orthodoxy this would be difficult as the question would be "does it match or complement what was there before?" -- hence the Old Believers' revolt in Russia in the 1600s.
Sola Scriptura as it is practiced by those who take it seriously was not first discovered by the Protestant Reformers, but is exampled by a number of the early fathers and by examples in the Bible itself, and we can take up that discussion if you like.
But what you have referred to in terms of a completely autonomous and individualistic approach was not the invention of the Reformers. We who are historically conscious reformers differentiate the two with the terms “Sola” versus “Solo” Scriptura. Solo Scriptura invites a complete amnesia of all that went before or outside of the given interpreter. It is truly a byproduct of Enlightenment subjectivism and is the old fuel that still burns in the postmodern subjectivist relativist deconstructionist mind.
Whereas Sola Scriptura fits within the scheme of church learning and history, even the church’s authority to teach. For the Reformers, it was informed by not only Scripture, but by the positive examples of Cyril of Jerusalem, Athanasius, and even the irrepressible Bishop of Hippo, to name only a few. It does not presume to give every individual license to interpret in a void of accountability. It merely insures that the accountability works both ways, i.e., the church at large is obligated to heed its teachers and overseers, and to remember the lessons learned from the past. But likewise, God is not so weak he cannot communicate clearly in his word to every one of his children, and there come times when the leadership must be held to account by the church at large. The Reformation was such an event.
You mentioned the Old Believers’ revolt. They are the epitome of Reagan’s quip that he didn’t leave the Democratic party; they left him. There is an analogy here I would like you to consider. In the sixties, the flower children came along and had the arrogance to think they were the first generation to care about war, poverty, injustice, etc. These are like the Enlightenment “hippies” that elevated human autonomy to perverse extremes.
But lately we have the Tea Party, running around waving their Constitution booklets in the face of their wayward leaders and demanding accountability under the law as given by the Founders. This where the Reformers were coming from. They went back to the founding document and found it did not square well with where current leadership was headed. In other words, they used an objective form of truth, the written word, to try and rein in the subjective excesses of their leadership.
Note well the difference. The Enlightenment, because it elevated reason to be equal to or greater than the operation of faith, laid the groundwork for modern subjectivism. Whereas it was the Reformers who labored to call believers back to the objective rule of the written word, just as Paul himself does here:
1Cor 4:6 “Now these things, brethren, I have figuratively transferred to myself and Apollos for your sakes, that you may learn in us not to think beyond what is written, that none of you may be puffed up on behalf of one against the other.”
… “what is written” being a commonly used catch phrase for Scripture.
Likewise, getting back to Sola Scriptura in the modern era is really an effort to restore the balance between faith and reason. Augustine and Aquinas differed on faith versus reason. In terms of modern subjectivist theory, Aquinas has a recognized role in giving reason a greater role than any who had gone before him, a role equal to faith. Whereas Augustine clearly had retained the early emphasis on the primacy of divine revelation, and said things that are positively painful to modern autonomists, such as “to know, you must believe.”
Thus it is really Aquinas, through his life project of reconciling Athens and Jerusalem (especially Aristotle and Christian theology) who opened the door to the Enlightenment’s exaltation of reason to Reason.
Therefore it is a post hoc causation fallacy to say the Reformers caused the autonomy of the Enlightenment, and that somehow Sola Scriptura is a manifestation of said autonomy. The Roman church in the medieval period had begun to exercise enormous political power, which ran contrary to rise of the nation state. The break was ripe to happen on a multiplicity of grounds and when it did happen, was far more complex and spectacular than can be explained by the posting of 95 theses on a church door.
So while I am willing to hear anyone try to make a case for some view contrary to Sola Scriptura, I am going to insist the case be directed, not at a straw man like SolO Scriptura, or worse, at proponents of bizarre theologies of dreams and visions that are clearly opposite to SolA Scriptura, but at the actual belief of Sola Scriptura as propounded by those who both teach and practice it, none of whom discredit the value of the fathers, the ecumenical creeds, the teaching ministry within the church, and the mutual accountability of all believers to each other under the divine word.