gether with several books of annals, extending from the accession of Augustus, A. D. 14, to the death of Nero, A. D. 68,besides a history from the accession of Galba, A. D. 68, to the death of Domitian, A. D. 96. Both these latter works are

This

very imperfect. The first five books of his annals are preserved entire, and other five are missing; after which we have the continuation; and it is here that the famous and invaluable passage occurs, which he little thought, when he wrote it, would be so much esteemed by Christians. Here is a good opportunity to repeat a remark which we have before made. passage has been preserved in its proper connection, as we say in common phrase, by mere accident. Friends and foes, time and decay, have spared it, while other portions of the author's works are lost, it may be irrecoverably. Many Christians have propped up a tottering faith by reading this passage, because it has afforded them so clear, distinct, and undeniable testimony, that in the year 63 the Christians were found in Rome in great numbers, were treated with dire and fiendish cruelty, and in their worst sufferings found the faith, the doctrine, and the example of their Master sufficient. It is natural for all of us to find comfort and strength in such historical testimony. Christianity must be sustained by historical verifications. But such verifications are not to be sought for only in the express notices of the beginning and progress of our faith from authors who, for various reasons, had given it no attention. The existence of the Christian records and the Christian church,-the necessity of admitting a beginning to the faith which is now triumphant and unassailable, these are the larger historical verifications of Christianity. The allusions to it in the works of heathen authors, the mistaken superficial views which they accidentally present of it, are merely incidental and occasional. They join in here and there upon the great unbroken chain of evidence, and sometimes double its links. The history of Christianity would not have been a whit less true, if Tacitus had never written the passage we are now to read; and if, after he had written it, the part of his works which contained it had been lost, as are other parts, we might have lamented the absence from his writings of any confirmatory evidence of our faith, but we could not on that account have been justified in doubting the mass of evidence which we possess. We must establish in our minds this legitimate principle of reasoning. Accident, as we say, has preserved the passage of Tacitus; accident then

might have lost it.

There may be other passages of equal value in the portions of his works which are lost. What then? There are Christians, Christian records, and a Christian church. Where did they come from? The answer to that question leads along the direct chain of historical evidence, from our own time, back to the origin of Christianity. The passages from heathen writers, which we are now to quote, are to be regarded as incidental allusions to Christianity, as for one moment and no longer it arrested the attention of men, who probably never entertained a thought about investigating its history or character. Tacitus wrote about A. D. 100, certainly not later. the year of Christ 63, one year after Paul had left Rome to pursue his Apostolic journies, Nero was Emperor of Rome; he had come to supreme power in the year 54, at the age of 17; consequently in the year 63 he was 26 years old. He was one of the foulest monsters that ever polluted a throne. By the assistance of his mother he poisoned the son of her husband, and afterwards put her to death, as he did also his tutors, Burrhus and Seneca, his two wives, one of whom was the daughter of his adopted father, and the poet Lucan, with many others of lesser note. He disgraced himself by performing in the public theatres, having soldiers stationed as spies among the spectators, to inform him of any who passed unfavorable criticisms upon him. He said he was willing to be hated, if he could only be feared. His extravagance was unbounded; his sensuality disgusting and revolting. Though he maintained a sort of influence over the people, by distributing bribes and means of pleasure, he was hated as a monster. The Senate

at last revolted and took part in the conspiracies against him. To avoid the fate which he knew awaited him, he committed suicide, in the year 68, his death being followed by popular manifestations of joy.

In the year 63, there occurred in Rome the most awful and devastating conflagration ever recorded to have happened in a time of peace. Four of the Roman writers give an account of it as unparalleled in memory or example,-Tacitus, Suetonius, Dion Cassius, and Orosius. The fire continued nine days, during which the most splendid monuments, temples, and works of Grecian and Roman art, were crumbled into black ruins. The city was then divided into fourteen wards; of these three were entirely destroyed, seven were reduced to a melancholy condition of partial desolation, and only four escaped without

injury. The government took active measures for the relief of the sufferers, erecting temporary sheds, distributing corn and provisions, and opening the gardens of the Emperor as a common shelter. The city was subsequently rebuilt, in a more regular, commodious, and magnificent style. But before a thought of restoration had been cherished, in the midst of the agonies and the melancholy havoc of the desolation, the busy tongue of ruinor was speculating upon the authors of the conflagration. Amid the ruins of heathen splendor, the first general persecution of the disciples of Jesus Christ was devised. The people were determined to discover the cause of the calamity. First they had recourse to the temples of their gods, as Tacitus informs us; they presented oblations and offerings to Vulcan, Ceres, and Proserpine; Juno was propitiated by the Roman matrons, the Sibylline books were consulted, but all to no purpose. Rumor accused Nero himself of having set fire to the city, either that he might exercise his extravagant fondness for sumptuous edifices by rebuilding it, or that he might enjoy the scene as a fair representation of the flames of Troy. The monster was thought to be every way capable of the deed, for no cruelty or sin had as yet found him unwilling to be tempted. It was observed too that he was lavish in distributing relief to the people. He led them to the temples, and told them to appease the anger of the gods. We can now take the words of Tacitus as to what followed.

"But neither all human help, nor the liberality of the Emperor, nor all the atonements presented to the gods, availed to abate the infamy he lay under of having ordered the city to be set on fire. To suppress therefore this common rumor, Nero procured others to be accused, and inflicted exquisite punishment upon those people, who were in abhorrence for their crimes, and were commonly known by the name of Christians. They had their denomination from Christus, who in the reign of Tiberius was put to death as a criminal by the Procurator, Pontius Pilate. This pernicious superstition, though checked for a while, broke out again, and spread, not only over Judea, the source of this evil, but reached the city also; whither flow from all quarters all things vile and shameful, and where they find shelter and encouragement. At first they only were apprehended who confessed themselves of that sect; afterwards a vast multitude discovered by them; all which were condemned, not so much for the crime of burning the city as for their enmity to mankind. Their executions were so contrived as to

expose them to derision and contempt. Some were covered over with the skins of wild beasts, and torn to pieces by dogs; some were crucified; others, having been daubed over with combustible materials, were set up as lights in the night time, and thus burned to death. Nero made use of his own gardens as a theatre upon this occasion, and also exhibited the diversions of the circus, sometimes standing in the crowd as a spectator, in the habit of a charioteer; at other times driving a chariot himself; till at length these men, though really criminal and deserving exemplary punishment, began to be commiserated as people who were destroyed, not out of a regard to the public welfare, but only to gratify the cruelty of one man."

Such is the remarkable passage, the genuineness of which no skeptic or unbeliever ever presumed to question. Indeed the contents of the passage would afford full evidence of their author. It is written in the beautiful style of Tacitus, in his own classic language, with the mixture of philosophy and fact in the composition of history for which he is remarkable. Moreover the most untrue, superficial, and strange idea, which the author of this passage must have had of Christianity, is precisely in accordance with that which Tacitus, a proud and distinguished man, the companion of Emperors, the Consul, and the superintendent of pagan sacrificial rites, would have formed of Christianity.

What a mass of evidence and of valuable information is gathered in this passage! It asserts the execution of Christ by Pontius Pilate, -the perpetuation of his name and sentiments. among his followers, the prevalence of the faith in Judea where it arose, and its wide dissemination, in spite of the ignominious death of its author and the resistance of authority to his religion, that Christians were generally hated, — that they were so numerous at Rome, during the year 63, as to serve as victims of popular fury for popular suffering. Tacitus likewise bears witness to the awful sufferings of the Christians, and says nothing of their resistance or complaints. More than all, Tacitus adds that their sufferings excited compassion, and were believed to be not so much the punishment of guilt, as the inflictions of cruelty. Tacitus says Nero was absent from Rome at Antium, on the sea coast, about thirty miles distant, when the fire broke out. This, however, would not disprove the charge against him of having employed incendiaries. He returned in season to see his own palace fall before the flames.

As the murderer of his nearest relatives and friends, and then of himself, he was well fitted for the deed, and after he had done it, he might well charge it upon the Christians.

A few remarks may be made upon this passage from Tacitus. The Christians, he says, were "a people held in abhorrence for their crimes," "their religion was a pernicious superstition." We may smile at such a description, from a votary of heathenism, of the religion of the New Testament. All that we need say is, that it is an evidence how little he knew of it. As for the crimes which he speaks of, he speaks only from common report; he utters the popular opinion of his day and nation concerning the Christians that in their secret midnight worship they were guilty of impiety toward the Roman deities-they sacrificed infants-they formed pledges of fellowship in sinthey introduced a new God, viz. Christus- they hated all men, i. e. they abstained from the common heathen amusements, games, drinking ceremonies, &c.; they would not bow before the statues of the deities, nor throw incense upon their altars. Such were the crimes which rumor charged upon the Christians. They came likewise from Judea' the home of a despicable race the hot-bed of sedition and impiety, as the Romans thought. Yet they did not keep friendship with their own countrymen the Jews, but were in con

test with them as with the rest of the world. Their doctrine had been checked for a while, says Tacitus, viz. by the crucifixion of Christ; but in spite of this they had spread even to Rome. When Nero ventured to shift from himself to the Christians the odium of the awful calamity, he probably knew that popular fury could easily be turned against them. It was not simply that they were a foreign sect. There were many

foreign sects in Rome; but these were well known, and had all of them common points in form and tenet. The Christians were a new sect, and had no single point in common with the idolaters around them. The evidence of more than one Christian writer would have been thought necessary to confirm such an account of their savage treatment by Nero. But Tacitus leads the long list of those who have referred to it, with his explicit and undeniable testimony. On the spot where Nero thus set on fire his innocent victims, the historian tells us, were his own imperial circus and gardens, and there now stands the Church of St. Peter, an imperishable monument of the faith, which there entrusted its life and honor to a few feeble