recent years of Bible translation were having
their weight. The fugitive copies of the Bible
were doing their work. Spite of the sharp opposition
fifty thousand copies of Tindale's various
editions had actually been published and
circulated. Men were reading them; they were
approving them. The more they read, the less
reason they saw for hiding the Book from the
people. Why should it not be made common
and free? There was strong Lutheran opinion
in the universities. It was already a custom
for English teachers to go to Germany for
minute scholarship. They came back with German
Bibles in Luther's version and with Greek
Testaments, and the young scholars who were
being raised up felt the influence, consciously or
unconsciously, of the free use of the Bible which
ruled in many German universities.

The second fact that helps to explain the sudden
change of attitude toward the Bible is this:
the people of England were never willingly
ruled from without, religiously or politically.
There has recently been a considerable controversy
over the history of the Established
Church of England, whether it has always been
an independent church or was at one time
officially a part of the Roman Church. That
is a matter for ecclesiastical history to determine.
The foundation fact, however, is as I