Read this, and then think of “exitiabilis superstitio!” Or, if we be not allowed, in contending with Heathen authorities, to produce our books against theirs, we may at least be permitted to confront theirs with one another.  Of this “pernicious superstition” what could Pliny find to blame, when he was led, by his office, to institute something like an examination into the conduct and principles of the sect?  He discovered nothing but that they were went to meet together on a stated day before it was light, and sing among themselves a hymn to Christ as a God, and to bind themselves by an oath, not to the commission of any wickedness, but, not to be guilty of theft, robbery, or adultery; never to falsify their word, nor to deny a pledge committed to them, when called upon to return it.

Upon the words of Tacitus we may build the following observations: 

First; That we are well warranted in calling the view under which the learned men of that age beheld Christianity an obscure and distant view.  Had Tacitus known more of Christianity, of its precepts, duties, constitution, or design, however he had discredited the story, he would have respected the principle.  He would have described the religion differently, though he had rejected it.  It has been very satisfactorily shown, that the “superstition” of the Christians consisted in worshipping a person unknown to the Roman calendar; and that the “perniciousness” with which they were reproached was nothing else but their opposition to the established polytheism; and this view of the matter was just such an one as might be expected to occur to a mind which held the sect in too much contempt to concern itself about the grounds and reasons of their conduct.

Secondly; We may from hence remark how little reliance can be placed upon the most acute judgments in subjects which they are pleased to despise; and which, of course, they from the first consider as unworthy to be inquired into.  Had not Christianity survived to tell its own story, it must have gone down to posterity as a “pernicious superstition;” and that upon the credit of Tacitus’s account, much, I doubt not, strengthened by the name of the writer, and the reputation of his sagacity.

Thirdly; That this contempt, prior to examination, is an intellectual vice, from which the greatest faculties of mind are not free.  I know not, indeed, whether men of the greatest faculties of mind are not the most subject to it.  Such men feel themselves seated upon an eminence.  Looking down from their height upon the follies of mankind, they behold contending tenets wasting their idle strength upon one another with the common disdain of the absurdity of them all.  This habit of thought, however comfortable to the mind which entertain it, or however natural to great parts, is extremely dangerous; and more apt than almost any other disposition to produce hasty and contemptuous, and, by consequence, erroneous judgments, both of persons and opinions.