the Evil Line

Mark Noll writes about "the Magna Carta of the poor and the oppressed . . . the most democratic book in the world" in the Wall Street Journal:

Hundreds of phrases (clear as crystal, powers that be, root of the matter, a perfect Babel, two-edged sword) and thousands of words (arguments, city, conflict, humanity, legacy, network, voiceless, zeal) were in the common speech because they had first been in this translation.