Chapter 50 - The Open Bible

Summary

Much of what has been written in the preceding chapter is absolutely irrelevant to the intrinsic value of that book for which men fought and were willing to give their lives. To repeat my simile of that chapter, I have tried to lay as little emphasis on the spiritual value of these Bibles as on the market value of the Boston tea-chests: to stress social politics rather than religion.

But now we must go further, in so far as this can be done without involving ourselves directly in religious controversy. The literary value of the Bible has been acknowledged by so many thinkers who would reject much of its dogmatic teaching, that no social history of England can be complete without some serious estimate of what the book has brought into English life. Let us see, then, what this Bibllotheca brought to the English mind; what stimulus for thought and what models of style. And let us exclude for the while, in so far as this is possible, all purely theological considerations; let us try to regard these Scriptures as though they were Mohammedan or Buddhist in their origin.

We need not speak of the four Gospels, though that would strengthen the case. Let us allow the violent supposition that the majority of seriously minded medieval folk knew, roughly at least, the main life-history and sayings of Christ as recorded by the Evangelists.