6. Pliny represents the Christians as declaring that they were in the habit of meeting and singing hymns “to Christ as to a god.” The early Christians did not recognize Christ as a god, and it was not until after the time of Pliny that he was worshiped as such.
7. “I asked whether they were Christians; if they confessed, I asked them a second and a third time, threatening them with punishment; if they persevered I ordered them to be executed.” That this wise and good man rewarded lying with liberty and truthfulness with death is difficult to believe.
8. “I therefore deemed it more necessary to inquire of two servant maids, who were said to be attendants, what was the real truth, and to apply the torture.” Never have the person and character of woman been held more sacred than they were in Pagan Rome. That one of the noblest of Romans should have put to torture young women guiltless of crime is incredible.
9. The declaration of the Christians that they took a solemn obligation “not to do anything that was wicked; that they would commit no theft, robbery, or adultery, nor break their word,” etc., looks like an ingenious attempt to parade the virtues of primitive Christians.
10. This letter, it is claimed, is to be found in but one ancient copy of Pliny.
11. It was first quoted by Tertullian, and the age immediately preceding Tertullian was notorious for Christian forgeries.
12. Some of the best German critics reject it. Gibbon, while not denying its authenticity, pronounces it a “very curious epistle”; and Dr. Whiston, who considers it too valuable to discard, applies to its contents such epithets as “amazing doctrine!” “amazing stupidity!”
Josephus, Tacitus, Pliny—these are the disinterested witnesses adduced by the church to prove the historical existence of Jesus Christ; the one writing nearly one hundred years, the others one hundred and ten years after his alleged birth; the testimony of two of them self-evident forgeries, and that of the third a probable forgery.
But even if the doubtful and hostile letter of Pliny be genuine, it was not written until the second century, so that there is not to be found in all the records of profane history prior to the second century a single allusion to the reputed founder of Christianity.
To these witnesses is sometimes, though rarely, added a fourth, Suetonius, a Roman historian who, like Tacitus and Pliny, wrote in the second century. In his “Life of Nero,” Suetonius says: “The Christians, a race of men of a new and villainous superstition, were punished.” In his “Life of Claudius,” he says: “He [Claudius] drove the Jews, who at the instigation of Chrestus were constantly rioting, out of Rome.” Of course no candid Christian will contend that Christ was inciting Jewish riots at Rome fifteen years after he was crucified at Jerusalem.