He was condemned by the
University of Paris, and various propositions of his were declared
to be heretical and impious. Fortunately, the worst persecutors
could not reach him; otherwise they might have treated him as they
treated his disciple, Berquin, whom in 1529 they burned at Paris.
The fate of this spurious text throws light into the workings of
human nature in its relations to sacred literature. Although Luther
omitted it from his translation of the New Testament, and kept it
out of every copy published during his lifetime, and although at a
later period the most eminent Christian scholars showed that it had
no right to a place in the Bible, it was, after Luther's death,
replaced in the German translation, and has been incorporated into
all important editions of it, save one, since the beginning of the
seventeenth century. So essential was it found in maintaining the
dominant theology that, despite the fact that Sir Isaac Newton,
Richard Porson, the nineteenth-century revisers, and all other
eminent authorities have rejected it, the Anglican Church still
retains it in its Lectionary, and the Scotch Church continues to
use it in the Westminster Catechism, as a main support of the
doctrine of the Trinity.
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