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Notes -
I'm wondering why it got off the ground then. Few remember but it was very explicitly a banned ideology in continental Europe before it won.
The argument I usually see, including from some defenders of liberalism, is that it's due to the Thirty Years' War. Specifically, that the Peace of Westphalia was a pragmatic decision, rather than a principled one, motivated by the massive bloodshed and destruction producing only stalemate. Further, cuius regio, eius religio only ended the religious wars as external, interstate conflicts. There was still plenty of religious conflict within many states — albeit less bloody, due to smaller scale; and much shorter, due to the (increasingly centralized) state being on one side. These conflicts, in turn, became a problem due to the economic changes Europe was undergoing, with mercantilism evolving toward capitalism (intolerance of Catholic or Protestant minorities is bad for business).
When it comes to choosing or building ideologies, people tend to find ways to justify and rationalize the things they're already doing. Thus, the need to find an ideology that justified not invading your heretic neighbors to impose the true faith, not oppressing minority denominations too hard; as well as all the changes in the structure of government (driven in turn by changes in military technology — the end of castles was the end of feudalism proper, and states with labor-intensive militaries are generally more democratic than those with more capital-intensive ones) and economics. Liberalism provided just that. (Limited) religious tolerance went from an unprincipled, pragmatic accommodation with the realities on the ground to a clear application of moral and political principles.
(Of course, it then turns out that the kind of religious pluralism envisioned has ultimately proved unworkable in more than one way.)
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