Nobody had expected it when young Princess Elizabeth had acceded to the throne.

But as the years passed, Catholic practices simply fell into disuse. Old Catholic priests

who were trained in the old ways died out. And soon the only theology that pastors could access was Protestant.

Soon the only Bible that people remembered was in English.

And knowledge of it, ownership of it, filtered into even the most rural areas. And so Elizabeth's

long reign ensured that the nation was Protestant. What it could never do was ensure that the nation was filled with people who

were themselves evangelical. It seems to be fallen human nature to put our hopes in the next

leader, the next ruler. And with all the reform that

had come with Elizabeth, the Puritans thought the next monarch, James I, the one who would

authorize a new version of the Bible, the King James Version, would bring even more reform.

But would he? You're listening to Renewing Your Mind, and I'm glad that you're

joining us this week. Yesterday, Michael Reeves introduced us to Richard Sibbs, the Puritan,

and today he is going to zoom out to paint the picture of what was happening in Sibb's world.

James I is about to become king, followed by his

son, Charles I. So let's see if all the Puritans hoped would happen under the reign of King James

actually came to pass. Here's Dr. Reeves. What we're going to do in this lecture is we're going to step back now for a moment

and have a look at the bigger picture, the bigger story of what's going on.

So we'll pick up at about halfway through Richard Sibb's life, the end of Elizabeth's reign.

Now, by the end of her reign in 1603, there was no doubt that to be English was to be

Protestant. To be Catholic by this stage was to be the treacherous tool of foreign powers.

And the cult of the Virgin Mary had been replaced in England by the cult of the Virgin Queen, Elizabeth.

Things had really changed in her reign. Back in 1560 at the beginning of her reign, the Calvinist

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