men as received the truth with pleasure,, He drew over to him many Jews and Gentiles. This was the Chrift; and when Pilate, at the inftigation of the chief men among us had condemned him to the cross,. they, who before had conceived an affection for him, did not cease to adhere to him; for on the third day he appeared to them alive again, the divine prophets having foretold. thefe and many wonderful things concerning him. And the fect of the Christians, fo called from him, fubfifts to this time." Whatever become of the controversy concerning the genuineness of this passage; whether Jofephus go the whole length of our hiftory, which, if the paffage be fincere, he does; or whether he proceed only a very little way with us, which, if the paffage be rejected, we confefs to be the cafe; ftill what we afferted is true, that he gives no other or different hiftory of the fubject from ours, no other or different account of the origin of the inftitution. And I think also

* Antiq. 1. xviii. cap. iii. fect. 3

that

may

with great

reafon be contended,

that it
either that the paffage is genuine, or that the
filence of Jofephus was defigned. For, al-
though we should lay afide the authority of
our own books entirely, yet when Tacitus,
who wrote not twenty, perhaps not ten,
years after Jofephus in his account of a
period in which Jofephus was near thirty
years of age, tells us, that a vaft multitude of
Christians were condemned at Rome; that
they derived their denomination from Chrift,
who, in the reign of Tiberius, was put to
death, as a criminal, by the procurator Pon-
tius Pilate; that the fuperftition had spread
not only over Judea, the fource of the evil,
but had reached Rome alfo;-when Sueto-
nius, an historian contemporary with Taci-
tus, relates that, in the time of Claudius, the
Jews were making disturbances at Rome,
Chreftus being their leader; and that, dur-
ing the reign of Nero, the Christians werę
punished; under both which emperors Jo-
fephus lived:--when Pliny, who wrotę
his celebrated epistle not more than thirty
years after the publication of Jofephus's

hiftory,

1

hiftory, found the Chriftians in fuch numbers in the province of Bithynia as to draw from him a complaint, that the contagion had feized cities, towns, and villages, and had fo seized them as to produce a general defertion of the public rites; and when, as hath already been obferved, there is no reason for imagining that the Chriftians were more numerous in Bithynia than in many other parts of the Roman empire: it cannot, I fhould fuppofe, after this, be believed, that the religion, and the tranfaction upon which it was founded, were too obfcure to engage the attention of Jofephus, or to obtain a a place in his hiftory. Perhaps he did not know how to represent the business, and difpofed of his difficulties by paffing it over in filence. Eufebius wrote the life of Conftantine, yet omits intirely the most remarkable circumftance in that life, the death of his fon Crifpus; undoubtedly for the reason here given. The reserve of Jofephus upon the fubject of Chriftianity appears alfo in his paffing over the banishment of the Jews by Claudius, which Suetonius, we have feen,

has

has recorded with an exprefs reference to Chrift. This is at least as remarkable as his filence about the infants of Bethlehem *. Be, however, the fact, or the cause of the omiffion in Jofephust, what it may, no other or different hiftory on the subject has been given by him, or is pretended to have been given.

But farther; the whole series of Chriftian

* Michaelis has computed, and as it fhould feem, fairly enough, that probably not more than twenty children perished by this cruel precaution. Michael, Introd. to the N. Teft. tranflated by Marfh. Vol. I, c. ii. fect. 11.

There is no notice taken of Chriftianity in the Mishna, a collection of Jewish traditions compiled about the year 180, although it contains a Tract, "De cultu peregrino," of strange or idolatrous worship; yet it cannot be difputed but that Chriftianity was perfectly well known in the world at this time. There is extremely little notice of the subject in the Jerufalem Talmud, compiled about the year 300, and not much more in the Babylonish Talmud, of the year 500, although both thefe works are of a religious nature, and although, when the firft was compiled, Christianity was upon the point of becoming the religion of the state, and, when the latter was published, had been fo for 200 years.

writers,

writers, from the firft age of the inftitution down to the prefent, in their difcuffions, apologies, arguments, and controverfies, proceed upon the general story which our fcriptures contain, and upon no other. The main facts, the principal agents, are alike in all. This argument will appear to be of great force, when it is known that we are able to trace back the series of writers to a contact with the hiftorical books of the New Teftament, and to the age of the first emiffaries of the religion, and to deduce it, by an unbroken continuation, from that end of the train to the prefent,

The remaining letters of the apoftles (and what more original than their letters can we have?), though written without the remotest defign of transmitting the history of Chrift, or of Christianity to future agès, or even of making it known to their contemporaries, incidentally disclose to us the following circumftances:" Chrift's defcent and family, his innocence, the meeknefs and gentleness of his character (a recognition which goes

to