_.[565:6] This Eusebius is the sheet-anchor of reliance for most
we know of the first three centuries of the Christian history. What then
must we think of the _history_ of the first three centuries of the
Christian era?

The celebrated passage in Tacitus which Christian divines--and even
some liberal writers--attempt to support, is to be found in his
_Annals_. In this work he is made to speak of _Christians_, who "had
their denomination from _Christus_, who, in the reign of Tiberius, was
put to death as a criminal by the procurator Pontius Pilate."

In answer to this we have the following:

1. This passage, which would have served the purpose of Christian
quotation better than any other in all the writings of Tacitus, or of
any Pagan writer whatever, _is not quoted by any of the Christian
Fathers_.

2. It is not quoted by Tertullian, though he had read and largely quotes
the works of Tacitus.

3. And though his argument immediately called for the use of this
quotation with so loud a voice (Apol. ch. v.), that his omission of it,
if it had really existed, amounts to a _violent improbability_.

4. This Father has spoken of Tacitus in a way that it is absolutely
impossible that he should have spoken of him, had his writings contained
such a passage.

5. It is not quoted by Clemens Alexandrinus, _who set himself entirely
to the work of adducing and bringing together all the admissions and
recognitions which Pagan authors had made of the existence of Christ
Jesus or Christians before his time_.

6. It has been nowhere stumbled upon by the laborious and all-seeking
Eusebius, who could by no possibility have overlooked it, and whom it
would have saved from the labor of forging the passage in Josephus; of
adducing the correspondence of Christ Jesus and Abgarus, and the
Sibylline verses; of forging a divine revelation from the god Apollo, in
attestation of Christ Jesus' ascension into heaven; and innumerable
other of his pious and holy cheats.

7. Tacitus has in no other part of his writings made the least allusion
to "_Christ_" or "_Christians_."

8. The use of this passage as part of the evidences of the Christian
religion, is absolutely modern.

9. There is no vestige nor trace of its existence anywhere in the world
before the 15th century.[566:1]

10. No reference whatever is made to this passage by any writer or
historian, monkish or otherwise, before that time,[567:1] which, to say
the least, is very singul