of a powerful and profound understanding. He was by no means unsusceptible of religious impressions, nor indifferent on matters of religion; but he followed therein his own peculiar views and opinions; and hence it is quite natural that his attention should be easily drawn to any extraordinary religious event. He detested, and even persecuted the Egyptian idolatry, and the Jewish worship, and ordered that the sacerdotal robes and sacred vessels of their priests should be burned. He had a strong faith in destiny, was somewhat addicted to astrology, and dreaded signs in the heavens. If his hostility towards the Jews and his persecution of that nation, be alledged as an objection to the truth of this narrative, (as if it were absolutely necessary that he should have confounded the Christians with the Jews); we may reply that this is a purely arbitrary hypothesis, and that it is far more natural to conclude that, when Tiberius had received from Pilate, or other Roman captains, certain intelligence of the life and death of our Saviour, he was no doubt informed by these eye-witnesses of the hatred and persecution which our Saviour had sustained from the Jews. The single fact indeed, that Christianity was so much opposed to the Pagan worship and the political idolatry of the Romans--as for instance to the sacrifice before the image of the Emperor--was in all probability not stated nor clearly explained in this first account, composed by persons very little acquainted with the true nature of the new Revelation. Otherwise such an account would have produced on a man imbued with Roman prejudices no other impression but that of aversion and disgust. The idea and proposal itself of regarding an extraordinary man endowed with wonderful and divine power, at God and as worthy of divine honours, has nothing at all improbable in itself, or at all inconsistent with Roman rites and usages, of with Roman opinions respecting Gods and deified men. The only thing really improbable in the whole affair, is that the Senate of that time should have dared to oppose and contradict Tiberius in this matter. However, if the Senate, as we may easily imagine, were hostile to the proposal of Tiberius, it was easy for them to adopt some evasive form, and indirectly to impede and set aside this matter, which as it regarded old national rites, fell entirely within their jurisdiction. But this circumstance, as we said before, is the only thing which appears at all exaggerated in this account. It is easy to understand from this how the proposition of Tiberius, which was never carried into execution should have fallen into complete oblivion, and should never have come to the knowledge of Tacitus; as we may conclude, from his account of the Christians, that he would not otherwise have suffered this circumstance to pass unnoticed. Singular and remarkable as this fact may be, it is of no importance in itself; it forms only a