The Reformation gave the Bible a new position--not that there had been no Bible before, nor that the Bible had had no influence. We have seen that there were numbers of Bibles, in Latin as well as in the vernacular, and that the Bible had been one of the foundations of mediæval civilisation, yet it was only by Luther's translation and the other versions made on his model that the Bible became a really popular book, and it was only by the Reformation that the Bible was established as the authority for daily life in a modern, that is, non-ascetic, sense. The two points insisted on by all the reformers were, first, that the Bible is perspicuous, that is, that every reader can by himself find out in his Bible what is essential for salvation; and, secondly, that the Bible is sufficient. The Christian does not need anything else; the Bible tells him everything which he requires--of course in its own domain, religion, or, to use the language of that time, the "doctrine of salvation." By the Reformation the Bible got rid of all its rivals, such as tradition, Apocrypha, legend, canon law, and so on. It is wonderful to see--and I doubt if modern Christianity has realised the fact in all its importance--how by the preaching of the reformers all these things, which hitherto had been thought of as integral parts of Christianity, simply fell away. No cult of the saints, no adoration of their images, no legends, no fancy, no merriment connected with religion, but the pure Bible and the stern doctrine of it and the austere attitude of Puritanism corresponding to it were now uppermost. Nay, the letter of the Bible was binding in a stricter sense than it had ever been before. Catholicism made it possible to mitigate the strictness by allegorical interpretation; Protestantism insisted upon taking the Bible in its literal sense. There was now no way of escape; a man had to take whatever the Bible said or refuse the Bible altogether. In principle the mystery had gone; the Bible was plain and made itself understood. It was the literal sense, as established by lexicon and grammar, which was to be followed. This caused the reformers to encourage and facilitate the study of the original languages of the Bible. When they tried to improve the grammar-schools and to found as many new ones as possible, it was not so much the humanistic delight in the classical languages as the desire to secure a sure knowledge of Greek and Hebrew which might enable a boy to read and to interpret the Bible. It is evident from many utterances both of Luther and Calvin that their aim in all their school work was to provide good preachers of the true gospel, or good teachers of the genuine doctrine of the Bible.