It was inevitable, in selecting two authors as examples of the literary activities and of the publishing methods of the first part of the sixteenth century, that one of these two should be Luther, whose writings achieved a larger popularity and exercised a more far-reaching influence than could be claimed for any books of the century. It is to be borne in mind, however, that Luther’s work as an author was not something apart from his interests as a Reformer. He wrote because he felt the spirit of the Lord to be upon him, and because he had the conviction that he was God’s instrument for bringing a message to the world, and for delivering the true Church from the burdens and corruptions that had been brought upon it through the wiles of Satan. The Reformation was an intellectual revolution, and the immediate work of the Reformers was carried on by argument, presented in part by preaching, but very largely by means of printed material, books and pamphlets. It is difficult to conceive of the accomplishment of the Reformation without the aid of the printing-press, and it is probably, in fact, not too much to say that, without the printing-press, the work done by the Reformers could not have been brought about at all. The Church authorities had, as we have seen, given to the first printers a cordial welcome, and many of the earlier typographers had been indebted to ecclesiastics for all important co-operation and support. After, however, the printers of Wittenberg had begun to send out by thousands the pamphlets of Luther and Melanchthon, and when, a little later, the presses of Geneva and Zurich were being devoted to supplying to a public still nearer to Rome the writings of Calvin and Zwingli; when, in fact, Europe seemed to be full of “winged words,” words the sting of which was nearly always directed against Rome, the ecclesiastics began to realise the extent of their blunder. Repression in various forms was attempted: rigorous censorship, prohibition, confiscation and burning of copies, the _Index Expurgatorius_, the ban of excommunication on writers and printers of forbidden books--all these and other forms of restriction were put into force, with the very general result of advertising the objectionable literature, of emphasising its importance, and of adding to its circulation and its influence. The Church finally took the printing-press into its own service, and it succeeded, in the course of a generation or two, in training up a school of literary defenders and apologists who, in the period of the Catholic revival, were able, in a measure at least, to hold their own in controversy with the Protestant opponents of Rome. It was certainly the case, however, that, taking the sixteenth century as a whole, the printing press proved one of the most effective of the influences for undermining the authority of the Papacy and for restricting the rule of the Roman Church.