170 BIBLICAL CONTROVERSY. [CHAP. XII. 



losopher who unreservedly makes known the most legitimate de 

 ductions from facts. Such, in truth, is the present condition of 

 things throughout Christendom, the millions being left in the 

 same darkness respecting the antiquity of the globe, and the suc 

 cessive races of animals and plants which inhabited it before the 

 creation of man, as they were in the middle ages ; or, rather, 

 each new generation being allowed to grow up with, or derive 

 from Genesis, ideas directly hostile to the conclusions universally 

 received by all who have studied the earth s autobiography. Not 

 merely the multitude, but many of those who are called learned, 

 still continue, while beholding with delight the external beauty 

 of the rocks and mountains, to gaze on them as Virgil s hero ad 

 mired his shield of divine workmanship, without dreaming of its 

 historical import : 



&quot; Dona parentis 

 Miratur, rerumque ignarus imagine gaudet.&quot; 



The extent to which, in Protestant countries, and where there 

 is a free press, opinions universally entertained by the higher 

 classes, may circulate among them in print and may yet remain 

 a sealed book to the million as completely as if they were still in 

 sacerdotal keeping, is such as no one antecedently to experience 

 would have believed possible. The discoveries alluded to are by 

 no means confined to the domain of physical science. I may cite 

 as one remarkable example the detection of the spurious nature 

 of the celebrated verse in the First Epistle of John, chap. v. verse 

 7, commonly called &quot;the Three Heavenly Witnesses.&quot; Luther, 

 in the last edition which he published of the Bible, had expunged 

 this passage as spurious ; but, shortly after his death, it was re 

 stored by his followers, in deference to popular prepossessions and 

 Trinitarian opinions. Erasmus omitted it in his editions of the 

 New Testament in the years 1516 and 1519; and after it had 

 been excluded by several other eminent critics, Sir Isaac Newton 

 wrote his celebrated dissertation on the subject between the years 

 1690 and 1700, strengthening the arguments previously adduced 

 against the genuineness of the verse. Finally, Porson published, 

 in 1788 and 1790, his famous letters, by which the question was 



