Tolle Lege Press was founded in January 2004 by Brandon Vallorani, to bring great Christian literature from the past back into print for the modern Church. Our publications are all produced with one mission and goal: advancing the Kingdom of our Lord Jesus Christ. Our flagship resource, the restored edition of the 1599 Geneva Bible, has sold over 45,000 copies since it was released in 2006.

Since it’s founding, Tolle Lege Press has expanded to offer several additional resources which equip today’s Christian family with thought-provoking and Biblically-sound resources. Click the Reformation Bookstore link above to browse hundreds of these resources online.

The name Tolle Lege comes from St. Augustine’s autobiographical work Confessions. Translated from the Latin and pronounced “tol-lay lah-jhay,” it means, “take up and read.” Augustine used this phrase when relating his own conversion experience as he described how God used a sentence in the New Testament (Romans 13:13-14) to suddenly convert him:

But when a profound reflection had, from the secret depths of my soul, drawn together and heaped up all my misery before the sight of my heart, there arose a mighty storm, accompanied by as mighty a shower of tears … I flung myself down, how, I know not, under a certain fig-tree, giving free course to my tears, and the streams of mine eyes gushed out, an acceptable sacrifice unto Thee. And, not indeed in these words, yet to this effect, spake I much unto Thee,- “But Thou, O Lord, how long? How long, Lord? Wilt Thou be angry for ever? Oh, remember not against us former iniquities;” for I felt that I was enthralled by them. I sent up these sorrowful cries,- “How long, how long? Tomorrow, and tomorrow? Why not now? Why is there not this hour an end to my uncleanness?”

 

I was saying these things and weeping in the most bitter contrition of my heart, when, lo, I heard the voice as of a boy or girl, I know not which, coming from a neighbouring house, chanting, and oft repeating, “Take up and read; take up and read.” Immediately my countenance was changed, and I began most earnestly to consider whether it was usual for children in any kind of game to sing such words; nor could I remember ever to have heard the like. So, restraining the torrent of my tears, I rose up, interpreting it no other way than as a command to me from Heaven to open the book, and to read the first chapter I should light upon . . . I grasped, opened, and in silence read that paragraph on which my eyes first fell,-“Not in rioting and drunkenness, not in chambering and wantonness, not in strife and envying; but put ye on the Lord Jesus Christ, and make not provision for the flesh, to fulfil the lusts thereof.” No further would I read, nor did I need; for instantly, as the sentence ended,-by a light, as it were, of security infused into my heart,-all the gloom of doubt vanished away.

-The Confessions of St. Augustine (Book 8, Chapter 12)

Owners / Staff / Board

Brandon R. Vallorani,
CEO / Founder

1599 Geneva Bible
Advisory Board

Gary DeMar, M.Div.
William J. Federer
Marshall Foster, Ph.D.
George Grant, Ph. D.
Paul Jehle, Ph.D.
Douglas Kelly, Ph.D.
Peter Lillback, Ph.D.
Rev. Joseph Morecraft III
Joseph Pipa, Ph. D.
Phillip Rollinson, Ph.D.
Mark Rushdoony, Rev.
Benjamin Shaw, Ph.D.
C.N. Willborn, Ph.D.