an conquerors of Rome,
and extended their spiritual jurisdiction from the coast of the Baltic
to the shores of the Pacific Ocean.

But it would be improper to dismiss this account of Nero's persecution,
till we have made some observations that may serve to remove the
difficulties with which it is perplexed, and to throw some light on the
subsequent history of the church.

1. The most sceptical criticism is obliged to respect the truth of this
extraordinary fact, and the integrity of this celebrated passage of
Tacitus. The former is confirmed by the diligent and accurate Suetonius,
who mentions the punishment which Nero inflicted on the Christians, a
sect of men who had embraced a new and criminal superstition. The latter
may be proved by the consent of the most ancient manuscripts; by the
inimitable character of the style of Tacitus by his reputation, which
guarded his text from the interpolations of pious fraud; and by the
purport of his narration, which accused the first Christians of the most
atrocious crimes, without insinuating that they possessed any miraculous
or even magical powers above the rest of mankind. 2. Notwithstanding it
is probable that Tacitus was born some years before the fire of Rome,
he could derive only from reading and conversation the knowledge of an
event which happened during his infancy. Before he gave himself to the
public, he calmly waited till his genius had attained its full maturity,
and he was more than forty years of age, when a grateful regard for
the memory of the virtuous Agricola extorted from him the most early of
those historical compositions which will delight and instruct the most
distant posterity. After making a trial of his strength in the life of
Agricola and the description of Germany, he conceived, and at length
executed, a more arduous work; the history of Rome, in thirty books,
from the fall of Nero to the accession of Nerva. The administration
of Nerva introduced an age of justice and propriety, which Tacitus had
destined for the occupation of his old age; but when he took a nearer
view of his subject, judging, perhaps, that it was a more honorable or
a less invidious office to record the vices of past tyrants, than to
celebrate the virtues of a reigning monarch, he chose rather to relate,
under the form of annals, the actions of the four immediate successors
of Augustus. To collect, to dispose, and to adorn a series of fourscore
years, in an immortal work, every sen