The Conservative Reformation and Its Theology - Saint Mary ...

truth was maintained by reading and teaching the Holy Scriptures. The
Albigensian and Waldensian martyrs, were martyrs of the Word:
"Those slaughtered saints whose bones
Lie scattered on the Alpine mountains cold,
Even those who kept God's truth so pure of old,
When all our fathers worshipped stocks and stones."
The invention of printing, and hardly less, the invention of paper
made from rags- for what would printing be worth, if we were still
confined to so costly a material for books as parchment--prepared the way
for the diffusion of the Scriptures.
The Church of Rome did not apprehend the danger which lay in that
Book. Previous to the Reformation there were not only editions of the
Scripture in the originals, but the old Church translation into Latin (the
Vulgate) and versions from it into the living languages were printed. In
Spain, whose dark opposition to the Word of God has since become her
reproach and her curse, and in which no such book as the one of which we
are about to speak has come forth for centuries, in Spain, more than a
hundred years before there was enough Hebrew type in all England to
print three consecutive lines, the first great POLYGLOT BIBLE, in
Hebrew, Chaldee, Greek, and Latin, was issued at Complutum under the
direction of Ximenes, her renowned cardinal and chief minister of state. It
came forth in a form which, in splendor and value, far surpassed all that the
world had yet seen. We may consider the Complutensian Polyglot, the
crown of glory to the labors of the Middle Ages. It links itself clearly in
historical connection with the GRAND BIBLICAL ERA, the
Reformation itself, for though the printing of it was begun in 1502, and
finished in 1517, it was not published till 1522, and in 1522, the FIRST
EDITION OF THE -NEW TESTAMENT, in German, came from the
hand of Luther, fixing the corner-stone of the grand edifice, whose
foundation had been laid in the Ninety-five Theses of 1517.
This, then, is the historical result of the facts we have presented,