The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and LiteratureMcAfee, Cleland Boyd
History
The Greatest English Classic: A Study of the King James Version of the Bible and Its Influence on Life and Literature
McAfee, Cleland Boyd
Bible -- History; Bible -- Influence; Bible and literature; Bible. English -- Versions -- Authorized
We have already thought sufficiently of the
events which actually followed. The final rupture
of Charles I. with parliamentary institutions
was due to the religious situation. There were
many Bible-reading families, learning their own
rights, while kings and favorites were plotting
war. Laud and the bishops forbade non-conforming
gatherings, but they could not prevent
a man's gathering his household about him while
he read the great stories of the Bible, in which
no king ruled when he had ceased to advance
his kingdom, in which each man was shut up
to God in the most vital things of his life. The
discussion of the time grew keen about predestination
and free-will. One meant that only
God had power; the other meant that men, and
if men, then specially kings, might control other
men if only they could. Not fully, but vaguely,
the crowd understood. Very fully, and not
vaguely, the leaders understood. Predestination
and Parliament became a cry. That is,
control lifted out of the hands of the free-will
of some monarch into the hands of a sovereign
God to whom every man had the same access
that any other man had. Laud decreed that all
such discussion should cease. He revived an
old decree that no book could be printed without
consent of an archbishop or the Bishop of
London. So the books became secret and more
virulent each year. The civil war (1642-46)
between Charles and Parliament was a war of
ideas. It is sometimes called a war of religion,
not quite fairly. It was due to the religious
situation, but actually it was for the liberties
of the people against the power of the king. And
that question rooted far down in another regarding
the rights of men to be free in their
religious life. Charles struck his coin at Oxford
with the Latin inscription: "The Protestant religion;
the laws of England; the liberties of
Parliament." But he struck it too late. He
had been trifling with the freedom of the people,
and they had learned from their fireside Bibles
and from their pulpits that no man may command
another in his relation to God. It was long
after that Burns described "The Cottar's Saturday
Night"; but he was only describing a condition
which was already in vogue, and which was
having tremendous influence in England as well
as in Scotland:
"The cheerfu' supper done, wi' serious face,
They, round the ingle, form a circle wide;
The sire turns o'er, wi' patriarchal grace,
The big ha' Bible, ance his father's pride:
His bonnet rev'rently is laid aside,
His lyart haffets wearing thin an' bare;
Those strains that once did sweet in Zion glide,
He wales a portion with judicious care,
And 'Let us worship God!' he says, with solemn air."
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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