Whitewashing goes on apace. Dean Milman whitewashed Savonarola in 1855, and in 1905 Baron Corvo whitewashed the entire Borgia family; and in due season all the villains of history will be arrayed in shining white. Meanwhile it is hard on those whose turn is yet to come, as they are suffering by comparison now. Dreyfus has been whitewashed, and Bazaine has not: yet he was the worse treated of the two--a packed tribunal, with charges framed in such a way that the accused could not put in his real defence. Whitewash is an admirable thing, but people always lay it on too thick; and Rendle not only makes Tiberius ‘a believer in the divinity of Jesus Christ’ but makes him ‘the nursing father of the infant Catholic Church.’ Tacitus calls Christianity an ‘exitiabilis superstitio,’ and says that it arose in the reign of Tiberius, was kept down for a time, and then broke out again, _Annales_, XV. 44; and he also says that a ‘gravissimum exitium’ was brought in very artfully by Tiberius himself, was kept down for a time, and then broke out again, _Annales_, I. 73. Rendle argues that this ‘exitium’ must have been the ‘exitiabilis superstitio’ of Christianity, and not Espionage, as the context would lead one to suppose. Having satisfied himself of this by a careful examination of Tacitus and other good authorities, he goes on to admit inferior authorities without any examination at all, if only they concur in this. And thus he admits Tertullian, _Apologeticus_, 5, which says that Tiberius sent a Message to the Senate, recommending Christianity; and although the Senate rejected it, Tiberius did not change his mind, but used his powers to protect the Christians. According to Rendle, Tiberius sent this message to the Senate in the fourteenth year of his reign, whereas the Gospel of Luke says that Christ was not baptized until the fifteenth. Of course, the fifteenth is impossible if Christ was born before the death of Herod and was then in his thirtieth year, for this (as Athanasius saw) is the real meaning of the phrase ‘about thirty years old, beginning,’ which is translated so ridiculously in the Authorised version and so evasively in the Revised. But instead of saying that ‘fifteenth’ is a slip of the pen or something of the sort, Rendle takes the view that Luke is using ‘fifteenth’ in a Lucasian or Pickwickian sense for ‘tenth.’ It is a pity we have no more of this chronology. The book announces “a similar Volume by the same Author--a Chronological Arrangement of all the Events recorded in the New Testament.” But he died the year after, and the new book never came out.