ment, et novissima exempla meritos, because it seemed that they were destroyed not for the public good, but through the savageness of an individual."*

* Annal. Lib. XV. c. 44. Gibbon (Ch. XVI. Vol. II. p. 404, seqq.) has given a translation of this passage, in a style very unlike that of Tacitus, and then endeavoured to draw away attention from it by a series of trifling and irrelevant remarks, which, if it were not for their evident purpose, might seem only to indicate a want of judg ment and feeling in the writer. Among these remarks there are none with which we are concerned, except two contradictory suggestions. One of them is, that the cause which directed the cruelty of Nero against the Christians was their being confounded (that is to say, their being confounded by Nero) with the fierce zealots among the Jews, the followers of Judas the Gaulonite (or Galilæan), who, as well as the Christians, were called Galilæans. After stating this conjecture, Gibbon proceeds to his next suggestion, as an inference from it.

"How natural was it," he says, "for Tacitus, in the time of Hadrian, to appropriate to the Christians the guilt and sufferings, which he might, with far greater truth and justice, have attributed to a sect whose odious memory was almost extinguished?" The meaning of which is, that it was a natural error for Tacitus to report of the Christians what was true not of them, but of the Jewish sect or party of the Galilæans. According to this double hypothesis, Nero persecuted the Christians by mistake for those Galilæans, the followers of Judas the Gaulonite; and Tacitus was mistaken in supposing that the Christians were persecuted, since it was not they who suffered, but the followers of Judas.

But though the Christians were called Galilæans, the followers of Judas were not called Christians; and Tacitus and Suetonius relate that it was the Christians, the followers of Christ, (as the former expressly says), who endured such dreadful sufferings from the cruelty of Nero. Nor was Tacitus ignorant of the existence of the Christians of his own time, whom, while he was writing his Annals, his friend Pliny was torturing and condemning to death, though he could "find nothing against them but their bad and excessive superstition: " (nihil aliud inveni quàm superstitionem pravam et immodicam.) Against the Christians of his own time, whose characters he might

It is difficult to form a correct estimate of the moral worth of those who have lived in remote ages, under circumstances very unlike our own. We are apt to pass a severe judgment (not certainly without some reason), on those of the later fathers, who were very ready to admit and propagate calumnies against the heretics. But I know of nothing in their writings so dark and atrocious as this passage from Tacitus. They have nowhere, I think, described the terrible sufferings of men, whom they might have ascertained to be innocent, and affirmed that they deserved to suffer. Yet this passage was written by one, whose extraordinary intellect has stamped an imperishable value on that portion of his works which has survived the deluge of the dark ages, and who, in his high moral sense, appears to have had no superior among his heathen contemporaries.

HAD the Christians been destroyed by persecution, and had their books perished, if we may be allowed to make such suppositions, we could have had no particular reason for rejecting the description given of them by Tacitus, false as it now appears. Few ancient writers, on the ground of personal character, can put forward higher claims to credit. We might thus have been led into the grossest error; and hence we have another lesson to teach us, with what distrust and scrutiny it is proper for us to examine the accounts, which, in ancient times, either Christian or heathen writers

have known, Tacitus, no bigot, certainly, to the religion of his ancestors, contributed to inflame the popular enmity, by giving the sanction of his great name to the most cruel calumnies. To a philosopher the subject may suggest other trains of thought and feeling than those which occurred to Gibbon; and among them, while he is contemplating such error in such a man as Tacitus, may be a deep sense of the fallibility of our nature, even in the wisest.

have given of those against whom their prejudices were excited. In modern times both the writer and the reader may have far wider means of information, and the writer may be far more restrained by the dread of open contradiction and confutation, if not by any better motive.

But another more general reflection forces itself on the mind. One cannot help considering what reliance may be placed on the representations of an ancient author, when they cannot be, or when they are not, confronted with other accounts, or compared with known facts, or viewed in relation to his character, circumstances, and purpose, or tried by their intrinsic probability. The passage from Tacitus shows us, that we may find statements made with the greatest confidence by a writer of high authority, which are wholly at variance with the truth.

NOTE D.

(See p. 278.)

ON THE JEWISH DISPENSATION, THE PENTATEUCH, ANI THE OTHER BOOKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT.

SECTION I.

Preliminary Remarks.

In the Chapter treating of the opinions of the Gnostics and of the early catholic Christians, respecting the Jewish dispensation and the Old Testament, the difficulties at tending the subject are brought into view. But it would have been out of place there to present a solution of them accompanied with the explanations required. To do thi is the purpose of the present Note. We have seen how the Old Testament was regarded by the early Christians the catholic Christians as well as the heretics. How i should be regarded is a question of much interest.

Such is the connexion between Christianity and th Jewish religion, that the divine origin of the former implie the divine origin of the latter. Christianity, if I may s speak, has made itself responsible for the fact, that th Jewish religion, like itself, proceeded immediately from God. But Christianity has not made itself responsible fo the genuineness, the authenticity, or the moral and religiou teachings, of that collection of books by Jewish writers which constitutes the Old Testament. Taken collectively

it may appear, on the one hand, that those books possess a high and very peculiar character, which affords strong evidence of the divine origin of the Jewish religion; and it may appear, on the other hand, that they also contain much that is incredible, and much that does not approve itself to our understanding and moral feelings. But if the latter be the case, it is a fact with which Christianity is not concerned. Our religion is no more answerable for the genuineness, or the contents, of a series of Jewish writings, dating from an uncertain period, and continued till after the return of a part of the nation from the Babylonish captivity, than it is responsible for the genuineness and contents of the works ascribed to Christian authors from the second century to the eleventh. The truth of our religion is no more involved in the truth of all that is related in the Books of Judges, of Kings, and of Chronicles, or in the Pentateuch, supposing the Pentateuch not to be the work of Moses, than it is in the truth of all that is related in the Ecclesiastical Histories of Eusebius, Sozomen, and Theodoret.

If these propositions be true, they go far to remove those difficulties, which not only embarrassed the early Christians, but which have continued to embarrass Christians in every age. But if they be true, a great error has been committed both by Christians and by unbelievers. The most popular and effective objections of unbelievers have been directed not against Christianity, but against the Old Testament, on the ground that Christianity is responsible for the truth, and for the moral and religious character, of all its contents; and, instead of repelling so untenable a proposition, believers have likewise assumed it; or rather they have earnestly affirmed its correctness, and proceeded to argue upon it as they could.