Levels of style like levels of exegesis were part of an entire 
cultural complex, and exercised the thoughts of the Fathers 
with regard to the style of the Bible a great deal. John Donne is 
merely rehearsing a patristic commonplace when he writes: 
“The Holy Ghost in penning Scriptures delights himself not only 
with a propriety, but with a delicacy, and harmony, and melody 
of language; with height of Metaphors and other figures, which 
may work great impressions on the Readers, and not with 
barbarous or triviall, or market or homely language . . . (89)

     Ignorance of the continuous operation of the principle of 
decorum in styles misled people like R. W. Chambers into 
notions of plain simple styles as growing out of some happy 
new principle of literary practice. Thus Bede, who wrote in all 
styles, is congratulated in the Cambridge History of English  
Literature  because in his Ecclesiastical History : “It seems to be