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.