For various reasons, some critics have thrown doubt upon the genuineness of these two famous letters. The main cause of the hesitation in receiving them is the strong evidence contained in the correspondence bearing upon the existence and influence and great numbers of the Christian sect at the beginning of the second century. That a pagan author should supply us with the information—and especially a pagan author of the rank and position which the younger Pliny held—the adversaries of the Faith misliked.
These very doubts, however, as in other cases of doubt respecting the authenticity of some of our Christian and pagan writings bearing on the facts of very early Christianity, have established the genuineness of the pieces in question, the doubts requiring an answer, and the answer involving a careful and thoughtful investigation. It is singular, in their scarcely veiled hostility to the religion of Jesus, how some scholars attempt to discredit all the references to the Christians in early heathen writers.
In this case the investigation has completely proved the genuineness of the correspondence in question. Bishop Lightfoot, in the course of his thorough and scholarly examination, does not hesitate to write that the genuineness of the important Letters “can now only be questioned by a scepticism bordering on insanity.”
Amongst other critics who completely brush away all doubts here, he quotes Aldus Manutius, Mommsen, and the French writer (no friend to Christianity) Renan. The same view is also unhesitatingly taken by Allard and Boissier in France, and Ramsay in England. In any controversy which may arise here obviously the attestation of Tertullian in the last years of the century in which the Letters were written is of the highest value.[20]
I
THE CHARACTER OF TRAJAN
When Domitian was assassinated, and Nerva was proclaimed Emperor, a new spirit was introduced into the occupants of the imperial dignity. Nerva represented the old conservative and aristocratic spirit of the Roman Senate. He only reigned a short two years, but his great act was the association in the supreme power of one who in all respects would and could carry out the ancient traditions of Roman government, of which Nerva was a true representative.
Nerva died early in 98, and his associate Trajan at once became sole Emperor. In many respects this Trajan was the greatest of the despotic masters who in succession ruled the Roman world. At once a renowned soldier and a far-seeing statesman, his complex personality is admirably and tersely summed up by Allard (Histoire des Persécutions, i. 145), who writes of him: “On eût cru voir le sénat romain lui-même prenant une âme guerrière et montant sur le trône.”