"One of the best-attested miracles in all profane history is that which Tacitus reports of Vespasian, who cured a blind man in Alexandria by means of his spittle, and a lame man by the mere touch of his foot, in obedience to a vision of the god Serapis, who had enjoined them to have recourse to the emperor for these miraculous cures. The story may be seen in the works of that historian (Hist. lib. v. cap. 8. Suetonius gives nearly the same account in Vitia Vesp.), where every circumstance seems to add weight to the testimony, and might be displayed at large with all the force of argument and eloquence, if any one were now concerned to enforce the evidence of that exploded and idolatrous superstition: The gravity, solidity, age, and probity of so great an emperor, who, through the whole course of his life conversed in a familiar manner with his friends and courtiers, and never affected those extraordinary airs of divinity assumed by Alexander and Demetrius. The historian, a contemporary writer, noted for candor and veracity, and, withal, the greatest and most penetrating genius perhaps of all antiquity, and so free from any tendency to credulity that he even lies under the contrary imputation of Atheism and profaneness. The persons from whose authority he related the miracle, of established character for judgment and veracity, as we may well presume; eye witnesses of the fact, and confirming their testimony after the Flavian family was despoiled of the empire, and could no longer give any reward as the price of a lie. Utrumque, qui interfuere, nunc quoque memorant, postquam nullum, mendacio pretium. To which if we add the public nature of the facts as related, it will appear that no evidence can well be supposed stronger for so gross and palpable a falsehood.