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

that the Middle Ages became, in the wonderful providence of God, the
conservators of the Word which they are charged with suppressing; and
were unconsciously tending toward the sunrise of the truth, which was to
melt away their mists forever.
Where the Bible fell open.
The earliest efforts of the press were directed to the multiplication of
the copies of the Word of God. The first book ever printed, was the Bible.
Before the first twelve sheets of this first edition of the Scriptures were
printed, Gutenberg and Faust had incurred an expenditure of four
thousand florins. That Bible was the edition of the Latin Vulgate,
commonly known by the name of the "Mazarin Bible," from the fact that
a copy of it which for some time was the only one known, was discovered
about the middle of the eighteenth century in the Library of the College of
the Four Nations, founded at Paris by Cardinal Mazarin. At Mentz and
Cologne, the Vulgate translation of the Holy Scriptures was multiplied in
editions of various sizes. Some of these Latin Bibles had been purchased
for the University Library at Erfurth at a large price, and were rarely shown
even to visitors. One of them was destined to play a memorable part in the
history of mankind. While it was lying in the still niche of the Library,
there moved about the streets of the city and through the halls of the
University, a student of some eighteen years of age, destined for the law,
who already gave evidence of a genius which might have been a snare to
indolence, but who devoted himself to study with an unquenchable ardor.
Among the dim recesses of the Library, he was a daily seeker for
knowledge. His was a thirst for truth which was not satisfied with the
prescribed routine. Those books of which we now think as venerable
antiques, were then young and fresh--the glow of novelty was on much of
which we now speak as the musty and worm-eaten record of old-time
wisdom which we have outgrown. There the city of Harlem, through
Laurentius, and the city of Mentz, through Faustus, and the city of
Strasburg, through Gutenberg, put in their silent claims for the glory of
being the cradle. of the magic art of printing. There the great masters in