from living by prostitution, whose grandfather, father, or husband, was a Roman knight: for Vistilia, born of a noble family, had professed her venality before the ædiles. But they did not punish her, thinking that a sufficient punishment was inflicted on the unchaste by the very nature of the prostitution they profess. It was, however, demanded of Titidius Labeo, the husband of Vistilia, why he did not avail himself of the vengeance of the law against his wife, manifestly detected of such flagitiousness. And while he pretended that the sixty days allowed him for enquiring into her conduct were not yet expired, they decreed that the enquiry already made furnished sufficient evidence of her crime; and she absconded, having fled to the island of Seriphos. The Egyptian and Jewish ceremonies were the next subject of debate. By a decree of the senate, four thousand of that description-the descendants of enfranchised slaves, all infected with a foreign superstition, and of age to carry arms—were transported to the island of Sardinia, to make war upon the freebooters, who plundered the inhabitants and ravaged the country. If the whole number died in that unwholesome climate, the loss, it was said, would be of no kind of moment. The remaining sectaries were ordered, at a certain day, to depart out of Italy, unless before that time they renounced their impious worship.

From Josephus, who has related the fact here noticed by Tacitus, we infer that the men sent to the island of Sardinia were believers in Jesus. The same inference may be drawn from the Roman historian, who says that they were infected by their superstition, which means that they were animated by an ardent zeal to propagate their religious prin

ciples; and the narrative of Tacitus further implies that they were deprived of their civil rites, on account of the confusion which attended their efforts. Josephus informs us that the greater part of them suffered death rather than be deprived of their rights: this circumstance Tacitus has passed over in silence, as conferring too much honour on the sufferers; and he falsely asserts that they were all sent to the island of Sardinia.

Josephus has subjoined this transaction to the testimony which he bears to Jesus Christ, and a little before the death of Tiberius. But the Roman writer has placed it twelve or fourteen years anterior to this period; by which it would appear that it could have no connexion with Christianity: yet it is manifest that Tacitus himself was aware of the contrary, as in his History he gives the following statement. "The name was derived from Christ, who was crucified in the reign of Tiberius, under Pontius Pilate the procurator of Judea. By that event, the sect of which he was the founder received a blow which for a time checked the growth of a dangerous superstition. But it revived soon after, and spread with recruited vigour not only in Judea, the soil that gave it birth, but even in the city of Rome, the common sink into which every thing infamous and atrocious flows like a torrent from all quarters of the world." Here the introduction of Christianity to Rome is stated as an event that soon followed the resurrection of the founder, and the epithets infamous and atrocious are intended by Tacitus to characterize the deeds of which the wicked Jew and his associates were guilty, and which, as Josephus states, were the cause of the disturbance in that city. Why then should Tacitus

refer the affair to an antecedent period? His motive was this: Notwithstanding the crimes of which a few were guilty, the conduct of the Jews at large was highly honourable, and the emperor himself rewarded them with his favour and protection: and that the followers of Jesus might not claim this honour at any future period, he places the transaction in a time prior to his appearance as a divine teacher in Judea.

The women whose licentiousness the senate endeavoured to correct by a new law, were Roman matrons of rank and family, who had received the Gospel on its first introduction in Rome, and who frequented the temple of Isis, where some of them, it is to be feared, were guilty of the enormities which Tacitus imputes to Vistilia. But he is too prejudiced a writer to be believed without evidence. The charge, as told by him, bears the clearest marks of malice and contradiction. The senate, it seems, were so tender of the honour of Titidius Labeo, as to demand the punishment of his wife. He, on the other hand, endeavours to evade the accusation, which implies at least his conviction of her innocence. The accusers would not at first punish her, as thinking that a sufficient punishment is inflicted on the unchaste by the very nature of the prostitution they professed. They then altered their minds, and threatened to punish the husband for not punishing a wife whom he loved and protected, and who was probably entitled to his love and protection: and finding him unwilling to proceed against her, they decreed that any further enquiry was unnecessary!! So absurd and incoherent is intolerance, when determined to calumniate and oppress inno

cence.

Candour, however, requires me to say, that the character of this lady was very doubtful. Suetonius expressly affirms that she was guilty of commerce with her son-in-law. According to Tacitus, she absconded to the island of Seriphos; but this might be but a report, as it is more probable that she went away with the Jews, to whom she was become a convert, and who were compelled to leave Italy. Some of these, it is likely, withdrew to Greece; and it is remarkable that in the church at Corinth, soon after this time founded by the apostle Paul, he had occasion to notice the following fact: "It is universally reported that there is fornication among you, and such fornication as is not even named among the Gentiles, that one should have his father's wife; yet at this you are elated-and ought ye not rather to mourn, so that he who hath done this deed might be removed from among you?" Now does it not seem likely that Vistilia is the very woman condemned by the apostle? It seems not improbable that her reputed husband, unable to bear the public indignation, and actuated also by attachment, should accompany the lady in her voluntary exile. Her conduct had been discussed and reprobated by the people and senate of Rome; and this enabled Paul to say that her guilt was universally reported, and not even named among the Gentiles. Vistilia and her supposed husband were persons of rank, and this was the circumstance which induced the society at Corinth to exult in their conversion; but the apostle insinuates that they ought rather to look on this unnatural union as a funeral to mourn at, than a marriage to rejoice in.

The pages of Jewish history were open before

the public at the time when Tacitus wrote his work; yet in preference to Josephus, whom he knew to be most worthy of credit, he followed Apollonius, Manetho, Apion, Helicon, and others, who furnished materials for ridiculing and calumniating the Jews. "The Jews, we are told," says he, "were natives of the isle of Crete. At the time when Saturn was driven from his throne by the violence of Jupiter, they abandoned their habitations, and joined a settlement at the extremity of Libya. In support of this tradition, the etymology of their name is adduced as a proof. Mount Ida, well known to fame, stands in the isle of Crete: the inhabitants are called Idæans; and the word, by a barbarous corruption, was changed afterwards to that of Judæans. According to others, they were a colony from Egypt, when that country, during the reign of Isis, overflowing with inhabitants, poured forth its redundant numbers under the conduct of Hierosolymus and Juda..... In this clash of opinions, one point seems to be universally admitted. A pestilential disease, disfiguring the race of man, and making the body an object of loathsome deformity, spread all over Egypt. Bocchoris, at that time the reigning monarch, consulted the oracle of Jupiter Hammon, and received for answer, that the kingdom must be purified by exterminating the infected multitude as a race of men detested by the gods. After diligent search, the wretched sufferers were collected together, and in a wild and barren desert abandoned to their misery. In that distress, while the vul gar herd was sunk in deep despair, Moses, one of their number, reminded them that, by the wisdom of his counsels, they had been already rescued out of impending danger. Deserted as they were by