[564:4] Ibid. bk. xx. ch. ix. 1.
[564:5] John, Bishop of Constantinople, who died....
[565:1] Lardner: vol. vi. ch. iii.
[565:2] Bible for Learners, vol. iii. p. 27.
[565:3] Life of Christ, vol. I. p. 63.
[565:4] Hebrew and Christ. Rec. vol. ii. p. 62.
[565:5] In his Eccl. Hist. lib. 2. ch. xii.
[565:6] Ch. 31, bk. xii. of Eusebius Præ paratio Evangelica is entitled: "How far it may be proper to use falsehood as a medium for the benefit of those who require to be deceived;" and he closes his work with these words: "I have repeated whatever may rebound to the glory, and suppressed all that could tend to the disgrace of our religion."
[566:1] The original MSS. containing the "Annals of Tacitus" were "discovered" in the fifteenth century. Their existence cannot be traced back further than that time. And as it was an age of imposture, some persons are disposed to believe that not only portions of the Annals, but the whole work, was forged at that time. Mr. J. W. Ross, in an elaborate work published in London some years ago, contended that the Annals were forged by Poggio Bracciolini, their professed discoverer. At the time of Bracciolini the temptation was great to palm off literary forgeries, especially of the chief writers of antiquity, on account of the Popes, in their efforts to revive learning, giving money rewards and indulgences to those who should procure MS. copies of any of the ancient Greek or Roman authors. Manuscripts turned up as if by magic, in every direction; from libraries of monasteries, obscure as well as famous; the most out-of-the-way places,—the bottom of exhausted wells, besmeared by snails, as the History of Velleius Paterculus, or from garrets, where they had been contending with cobwebs and dust, as the poems of Catullus.
[567:1] A portion of the passage—that relating to the manner in which the Christians were put to death—is found in the Historia Sacra of Sulpicius Severus, a Christian Father, who died A. D. 420; but it is evident that this writer did not take it from the Annals. On the contrary, the passage was taken—as Mr. Ross shows—from the Historia Sacra, and bears traces of having been so appropriated. (See Tacitus & Bracciolini, the Annals forged in the XVth century, by J. W. Ross.)