LAURENCE CHADERTON WAS A REBELfor every one of his 38 years as president of the Puritan Emmanuel College at Cambridge University. He harangued against Church rituals. He didn't want an altar in the college chapel. He refused a doctoral degree—even though he was a famous Bible scholar—because he couldn't stand hierarchy. And most shocking, he argued that every child, woman, and man should have a Bible. Today, that seems commonplace. But to people in the 16th century, it was heresy. Furthermore, it was against the law.
Other obstacles also stood in the way of giving everyone a Bible. For one thing, there wasn't an English Bible translation everyone could agree on. And even if there had been, most of the population couldn't read.
So halfway through his career, Chaderton came up with an idea. He would give the Bible to the "common people" in his sermons. That meant completely revamping his preaching style. Up to then, his sermons had bristled with the kind of convoluted scholarly reasoning that university people loved. The trouble was, no one else understood them. Certainly not the farmers, laborers, women, and children he so passionately wanted to reach.
