Job 19:23; Psalm 68:11
Oh that my words were now written! oh that they were printed in a book!
The Lord gave the word: great was the company of those that published it.
ADAM CLARKE (1760-1832): Our translators have made a strange mistake by rendering the verb יחקו yuchaku, “printed,” when they should have used “described, traced out.” O that my words were fairly traced out in a book! It is necessary to make this remark, because superficial readers have imagined that the art of printing existed in Job’s time, and that it was not a discovery of the 15th century of the Christian era: whereas there is no proof that it ever existed in the world before 1440, or thereabouts.
JOHN TRAPP (1601-1699): The Chinese indeed tell us that they had the art of printing long before. But in Europe it was not heard of till the year 1440.
ADAM CLARKE: The first printed book with a date is a psalter printed by John Fust, in 1457, and the first Bible with a date is that by the same artist in 1460.
JOHN ANGELL JAMES (1785-1869): The invention of the art of printing forms an era in the history of mankind, next in importance to the promulgation of the Law, and the publication of the Gospel. Until this splendid gift was bestowed upon man, books, which were all in manuscript, were circulated within a comparatively narrow sphere, and knowledge was in the possession of only a privileged few.
ANDREW MILLER (1810-1883): Before the days of printing, many valuable books existed in manuscript, and seminaries of learning flourished in all civilized countries, but knowledge was necessarily confined to a comparatively small number of people. The manuscripts were so scarce and dear that they could only be purchased by kings and nobles, by collegiate and ecclesiastical establishments. “A copy of the Bible cost from forty to fifty pounds* for the writing only, for it took an expert copyist about ten months’ labour to make one.”―This invaluable art of printing, however, rendered the fountains of information accessible to all.
JOHN TRAPP: This paved a way for the great work which Martin Luther began in Germany.
ALEXANDER CARSON (1776-1844): Anyone who reads the history of the Reformation with an eye to this characteristic in Divine Providence will see it surprisingly illustrated in innumerable instances. The character and circumstances of Luther alone will afford a multitude of such providential provisions.
J. H. MERLE d’AUBIGNÉ (1794-1872): On the 31st October 1517, at noon, Luther walks boldly towards the Wittenberg church and posts upon the door Ninety-five Theses, or propositions.
ANDREW MILLER: The germs of the Reformation were contained in these propositions…The university and the whole city of Wittenberg were in commotion. All read the Theses; the startling propositions passed from mouth to mouth; pilgrims from all quarters then present in Wittenberg, carried back with them the famous Theses of the Augustinian monk, circulating the news everywhere. Luther had now entered the field against the doctrine and the abuses of the church of Rome.
J. H. MERLE d’AUBIGNÉ: Luther’s Ninety-five Theses spread with the rapidity of lightning. A month had not elapsed before they were at Rome. “In a fortnight,” says a contemporary historian, “they were in every part of Germany, and in four weeks they had traversed nearly the whole of Christendom, as if the very angels had been their messengers, and had placed them before the eyes of all men. No one can believe the noise they made.”
MARTYN LLOYD-JONES (1899-1981): We are so interested in Luther the theologian that we tend to forget Luther the preacher―Martin Luther was pre-eminently a great preacher.
J. W. ALEXANDER (1804-1859): Luther preached almost daily at Wittenberg.
J. H. MERLE d’AUBIGNÉ: If Luther and Zwingli had strictly confined themselves to preaching, the Reformation would not so rapidly have overrun the Church.
C. H. SPURGEON (1834-1892): The sermon which he preached today was dispersed by means of the printing press so that tomorrow they heard it thundering along the foot of the Apennines, and old Rome itself trembled at the voice of the monk of Germany!
J. H. MERLE d’AUBIGNÉ: The impulse which the Reformation gave to popular literature in Germany was immense. While in the year 1513 only thirty-five publications had appeared, and thirty-seven in 1517, the number of books increased with astonishing rapidity after the appearance of Martin Luther’s Theses. In 1518 we find seventy-one different works; in 1519, one hundred and eleven; in 1520, two hundred and eight; in 1521, two hundred and eleven; in 1522, three hundred and forty-seven; and in 1523, four hundred and ninety eight. And where were all these published? For the most part at Wittenberg.
And who were their authors? Generally Luther and his friends. In 1522, one hundred and thirty of the reformer’s writings were published; and in the year following, one hundred and eighty-three…The celebrated painter Lucas Cranach, published under the title of The Passion of Christ and Antichrist, a set of engravings which represented on one side the glory and magnificence of the Pope, and on the other the humiliation and sufferings of the Redeemer. The inscriptions were written by Luther.
J. C. RYLE (1816-1900): It was not merely the preaching of Luther and his friends which established Protestantism in Germany. The grand lever which overthrew the Pope’s power in that country, was Luther’s translation of the Bible into the German tongue.
WILLIAM GURNALL (1617-1679): The translating of the Scriptures into vulgar tongues was the glory, strength, and joy of the Reformation from Popery. Bless God for the translation of the Scriptures.
C. E. STUART (1828-1903): With the dawn of the Reformation, access to the original Hebrew and Greek sources was reopened; and the invention of printing brought within the reach of many the Scriptures in the original tongues. Then fresh translations were made. German, English, French, Italian, and Spanish versions by degrees appeared, made more or less directly from the Hebrew and Greek. William Tyndale was the first who translated the New Testament for English readers―Tyndale’s New Testament appeared in 1525.
J. H. MERLE d’AUBIGNÉ: The struggles of England with the Popedom began shortly after the dissemination of the English New Testament by Tyndale.
ADAM CLARKE: It was a wise saying of the Popish bishops in the time of Queen Mary: “If we do not put down this printing, it will put us down.” They laboured to put down the printing, but they could not; and, under God, the printing, by exposing the wickedness of their doctrine and practices, and especially by multiplying copies of the New Testament, did most effectually put them down.
JOHN TRAPP: That admirable invention of printing was a special blessing of God to mankind―that the Bible comes to us so cheap, is cause of thankfulness which our godly ancestors so hardly got and gladly bought at so dear a rate; in King Henry VIII’s days, some gave a load of hay for a few chapters of James or Paul.
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*Editor’s Note: In terms of purchasing power, paying £50 in 1517 for a copy of the Bible would equal approximately $100,000 US in 2017.
