The letters of the younger Pliny furnish an example of this silence, and
let us, in some measure, into the cause of it. From his celebrated
correspondence with Trajan, we know that the Christian religion
prevailed in a very considerable degree in the province over which he
presided; that it had excited his attention; that he had inquired into
the matter just so much as a Roman magistrate might be expected to
inquire, viz., whether the religion contained any opinions dangerous to
government; but that of its doctrines, its evidences, or its books, he
had not taken the trouble to inform himself with any degree of care or
correctness. But although Pliny had viewed Christianity in a nearer
position than most of his learned countrymen saw it in, yet he had
regarded the whole with such negligence and disdain (further than as it
seemed to concern his administration), that, in more than two hundred
and forty letters of his which have come down to us, the subject is
never once again mentioned. If, out of this number, the two letters
between him and Trajan had been lost, with what confidence would the
obscurity of the Christian religion have been argued from Pliny's
silence about it, and with how little truth!
The name and character which Tacitus has given to Christianity,
"exitiabilis superstitio" (a pernicious superstition), and by which two
words he disposes of the whole question of the merits or demerits of the
religion, afford a strong proof how little he knew, or concerned himself
to know, about the matter.
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