Biblical criticism not only made study of the Bible secularized and scholarly, it also went in the other direction and made it more democratic. It began to be recognized that: "Literature was written not just for the dons of Oxford and Cambridge, but also for common folk... Opposition to authority, especially ecclesiastical authority, was widespread, and religious tolerance was on the increase". Old orthodoxies were questioned and radical views tolerated. Scholars began writing in their common languages making their works available to a larger public.