ABSTRACT
This chapter addresses the question of causation, argues that the note-taking and extracting that accompanied godly reading set men and women on a path that, by teaching a fluent Scriptural style, a mode of gathering matter, and a sense of form, led to independent composition. It describes the texts that lay folk produced, and suggests that in their varied and hybrid forms, all of them point to the iconic place the book, as form and as material object, had come to occupy. This lay culture of devotional writing has been largely lost to sight. Records of prayers by lay people indicate that in fact children would hear their parents praying in this "Scripture phrase". For lay people such as Hastings and Bridgewater, women who did not receive the rhetorical training that was central to the humanist curriculum, the practices associated with Bible reading provided an alternative rhetorical education.
