Notwithstanding the approval given to the book by the pope, its publication brought out many and bitter criticisms. Accusations were heard of heresy and Arianism. Erasmus had departed from the version of the Vulgate and in his Latin text had substituted pure Latin for the monastic barbarisms; he had even, it was said, charged the Apostles with writing bad Greek. He had had the temerity to correct a number of texts in such a way as materially to alter their meaning, and in the first Epistle of John had ventured to omit altogether the testimony of the “Three Witnesses.” This unfortunate verse, after being accepted by the Protestants on the strength of its retention by Luther and of the later and more scholarly authority of the editors of the King James version, was finally condemned, as an interpolation, by the revisers under Victoria, who were thus in a position, after an interval of three and a half centuries, to bear testimony to the scholarship and the editorial boldness of Erasmus. That Erasmus did possess the courage of his convictions was evidenced by the character of the notes throughout the volume; for instance, in commenting upon the famous text, Matt. XVI, 18, “Upon this rock will I build my church,” he takes occasion to deny altogether the primacy of Peter and to express his surprise that words undoubtedly meant to apply to all Christians should have been interpreted as applying exclusively to the Roman pontiff; and this is said, it should be remembered, in a volume dedicated to the Pope.[3] The paraphrase of the New Testament, printed by Erasmus in Basel in 1524 was reprinted in an English version in London, and the work was so highly appreciated in England that a copy was ordered to be placed in every parish church beside the Bible. It was the influence of Erasmus (who was at the time in good favour with the Pope, Leo X) that secured for Froben, in 1514, a papal privilege for a term of five years for the works of St. Jerome. =2. France.=--Up to the close of the 12th century, the Church appears to have issued no regulations in regard to the use of the Bible in the vernacular or to the reading of the Bible in any form by laymen. In the 13th century, several of the synods in France prohibited the use of French versions of the Bible, and forbade the laity from reading theological writings or the Scriptures in any form (excepting the Psalms).[4] These regulations failed, however, to secure any uniform or enduring obedience.