Christianity has no tangible or anthentic historical foundation, _to be understood according to the literal sense of the New Testament?_ If such events or incidents in any way similar to those detailed in the New Testament, had in reality taken place at the times and places stated, they could not possibly have failed to excite the intense attention of the public authorities amongst the Romans, even if denuded of their miraculous accompaniments the infant butchery of Herod would alone have caused this attention. But as no one of all the historians or noted writers, Roman, Jewish, or Greek, who lived in the period of the alleged prodigies, nor those who came upon the public stage immediately after them, though there were upwards of twenty such distinguished authors, who wrote between the years 20 and 140 A.D., have taken the slightest notice of the life or crucifixion of a person called Christ--(the passage in Josephus is universally given up as forgery)--the inadmissible violations of Nature's laws, said to have accompanied that event, as narrated in the Gospels, which contradict each other in almost every important circumstance, we are forced to the conclusion that independently of everything miraculous, the story is totally unsupported by any concurrent testimony;* but when the miracles are taken into consideration in the literal sense, reason and all experience at once decide the whole to be grossly fabulous; and seems to be a circumstantial imitation of the crucifixion of Prometheus, as we have it in the tragedy of Æschylus, which is a dramatic allegory of the sun, and the planetary system.