ABSTRACT
The story of the English clergy's support for lay Scripture reading, then, is the story of ongoing, earnest but anxious attempts to delimit its proper scope, to provide tools to ensure proper edification, and yet at the same time to close off unsuitable avenues and discourage presumptuous ventures. Not only was Scripture central to public worship, not only did the government legislate that Bibles must be publicly placed in every parish church, but ministers endorsed the value of Scripture reading in the household and in the study. In short, Gerardus feels it necessary to insist that the books of Scripture are not to be treasured as physical talismans. Besides making the argument that knowledge of Scripture leads to amendment of life, Gerardus and Vaughan bravely tackle the daunting task of charting simple paths through the confusion of heterogeneous texts that make up the Bible.
