His letters how the Iewes, to malice bent,
Had put to death one Christ full innocent,
The sonne of God, of might, of power no lesse,
Which rose from death, as Christians all confesse.
Thus wise he wrote:
Pontius Pilate to his Lorde Claudius wisheth health.
This letter is in Flores historiarum, but you may not thinke that I doe set it downe thereby to affirme that he wrate it. For I am perswaded he would not write so well, and yet it appears by Orosius and others that Claudius would haue made Christ to haue bene taken in Rome for a God, and that the Senate and he fell so at variance about the same matter.
Of late it chaunst, which I haue proued well,
The Iewes through wrath by cruell doome haue lost
Themselues, and all their offspring that ensue.