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What testimony is ascribed to Paul?
“Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh” (1 Timothy iii, 16).
This is a gross perversion of Scripture for the purpose of making Paul a witness to Christ’s divinity. Regarding this text and the Trinitarian text inserted in 1 John, Sir Isaac Newton, in his letter previously quoted from, says:
“What the Latins have done in this text (1 John v, 7) the Greeks have done to Paul (1 Tim. iii, 16). They now read, ‘Great is the mystery of godliness; God manifest in the flesh’; whereas all the churches for the first four or five hundred years, and the authors of all the ancient versions, Jerome as well as the rest, read, ‘Great is the mystery of godliness, which was manifest in the flesh.’ Our English version makes it yet a little stronger. It reads, ‘Great is the mystery of godliness: God was manifest in the flesh.’”
In conclusion Newton says: “If the ancient churches, in debating and deciding the greatest mysteries of religion, knew nothing of these two texts, I understand not why we should be so fond of them now the debate is over.”