in delivering a relation, which has already been laid before
the reader, of the fire which happened at Rome in the tenth year of Nero
(which coincides with the thirtieth year after Christ's ascension),
asserts that the emperor, in order to suppress the rumours of having
been himself the author of the mischief, procured the Christians to be
accused. Of which Christians, thus brought into his narrative, the
following is so much of the historian's account as belongs to our
present purpose: "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, but reached the
city also. At first they only were apprehended who confessed themselves
of that sect; afterwards vast multitude were discovered by them." This
testimony to the early propagation of Christianity is extremely
material. It is from an historian of great reputation, living near the
time; from a stranger and an enemy to the religion; and it joins
immediately with the period through which the Scripture accounts extend.
It establishes these points: that the religion began at Jerusalem; that
it spread throughout Judea; that it had reached Rome, and not only so,
but that it had there obtained a great number of converts. This was
about six years after the time that Saint Paul wrote his Epistle to the
Romans, and something more than two years after he arrived there
himself. The converts to the religion were then so numerous at Rome,
that of those who were betrayed by the information of the persons first
persecuted, a great multitude (multitudo ingens) were discovered and
seized.

It seems probable, that the temporary check which Tacitus represents
Christianity to have received (repressa in praesens) referred to the
persecution of Jerusalem which followed the death of Stephen (Acts
viii.); and which, by dispersing the converts, caused the institution,
in some measure, to disappear. Its second eruption at the same place,
and within a short time, has much in it of the character of truth. It
was the firmness and perseverance of men who knew what they relied
upon.

Next in order of time, and perhaps superior in importance is the
testimony of Pliny the Younger. Pliny was the Roman governor of Pontus
and Bithynia, two considerable districts in the northern part of Asia
Minor. The situation in whi