NOTE VI.
The Christians were punished as the incendiaries of Rome. Nero was at once their accuser and their judge. It must be remembered that Tacitus, though deeply prejudiced against the Christians, bears an honourable testimony to their innocence. “Nothing,” he says, “could efface from the minds of men the prevailing opinion that Rome was set on fire by Nero’s own orders. The infamy of that horrible transaction still adhered to him. In order, if possible, to remove the imputation, he determined to transfer the guilt to others. For this purpose he punished with exquisite tortures a race of men detested for their evil practices, by vulgar appellation called Christians. The name was derived from Christ, who in the reign of Tiberius suffered under Pontius Pilate, the procurator of Judea. By that event the sect of which he was the founder received a blow which for a time checked the growth of a dangerous superstition, but it revived soon after, and spread with recruited vigour, not only in Judea, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome, the common sink into which everything infamous and abominable flows like a torrent from all quarters of the world. Nero proceeded with his usual artifice. He found a set of profligate abandoned wretches who were induced to confess themselves guilty, and on the evidence of such men a number of Christians were convicted, not indeed upon clear evidence of their having set the city on fire, but rather on account of their sullen hatred to the whole human race. They were put to death with exquisite cruelty, and to their sufferings Nero added mockery and derision. Some were covered with the skins of wild beasts and left to be devoured by dogs, others were nailed to the cross, and many covered over with inflammable matter were lighted up when the day declined, to serve as torches during the night.
“For the convenience of seeing this tragic spectacle the emperor lent his own gardens. He added the sports of the circus, and assisted in person, sometimes driving a curricle, and occasionally mixing with the rabble in his coachman’s dress. At length the cruelty of these proceedings filled every breast with compassion. Humanity relented in favour of the Christians. The manners of that people were, no doubt, of a pernicious tendency, and their crimes called for the hand of justice, but it was evident that they fell a sacrifice, not for the public good, but to glut the rage and cruelty of one man only.” (Tacitus.)
No Christian can read this account without feelings of resentment against the historian who has recorded the sufferings of the followers of Jesus, and their innocence of the crime for which they suffered. Unhappy prejudice alone prevented Tacitus from doing justice to their holiness, fortitude, and brotherly love. He ought not upon common report thus to have “condemned the guiltless.” Murphy has a fine note on these remarkable passages in Tacitus, a part of which I shall insert, as it does much honour to his heart and head.
“This was the first persecution of the Christians. Nero, the declared enemy of human kind, waged war against a religion which has since diffused the light of truth, and humanized the savages of Europe. Nero appears to be the first that attacked them as the professors of a new religion; and when such a man as Tacitus calls it ‘a dangerous superstition,’ it must be allowed that indirectly an apology is made for Nero. But for Tacitus, who had opportunities for a fair inquiry, what excuse is to be made? The vices of the Jews were imputed to the Christians without discrimination, and Tacitus suffers himself to be hurried away by the torrent of popular prejudice.”