Apocryphal New Testament — Historical English Collection

Apocryphal New Testament — Hone/Wake/Jones — Section 7

It is scarcely necessary to tell the reader, that in 1516 and 1519 Erasmus published his first and second editions of the Greek Testament, .both of which omitted the three heavenly witnesses. That having promised to insert them in his text, if they were found iu a single Greek MS. ; he was soon informed of the existence of such a MS. in England, and consequently inserted 1 John, v. 7, in his third edition, 1522. That this MS,, after a profound sleep of two centuries, has at last been found in the library of Trinity College, Dublin. That the Complutensian edition, which was not published till 1522, though it professes to be printed in 1514, has the seventh and eighth verses patched up from the modern Latin MS., and the final clause of the eighth verse, which is omitted in its proper place, trans- ferred to the end of the seventh. That Colinseus, in 1534, omitted the verse on the faith of MS. That R. Stephens, in his famous edition of 1550, inserted the verse, and marked the words ev tuc ovpavut as wanting in seven MSS. That Beza, suspecting no mistake, concluded that these seven MSS- contained the rest of the seventh verse, and the eighth with the words ev tt]l yrji* Sir Isaac Newton wrote a Dissertation upon this passage, wherein he gave a clear, exact, and comprehensive view of the whole question, and wherein he says, that when the adversaries of Erasmus had got the date.f