in the sight of God, and whoever did not believe the Jesuits would be punished by him to all eternity; that their emperor and benefactor, Cam-hi, who could not even pronounce the name of Christ, as the Chinese language possesses not the letter r, would suffer eternal damnation; that the emperor Youtchin would experience, without mercy, the same fate; that all the ancestors, both of Chinese and Tartars, would incur a similar penalty; that their descendants would undergo it also, as well as the rest of the world; and that the reverend fathers, the Jesuits, felt a sincere and paternal commiseration for the damnation of so many souls.

They, at length, succeeded in making converts of three princes of the Tartar race. In the meantime, the emperor { Cam-hi died, towards the close of the year 1722. He bequeathed the empire to his fourth son, who has been so celebrated through the whole world for the justice and the wisdom of his government, for the affection entertained for him by his subjects, and for the expulsion of the Jesuits.

prison on the borders of Tartary, while
those who had converted them were
treated so liberally, it is a decided proof
that they were state prisoners, and not
martyrs.

The emperor, soon after this, yielded to the supplications of all his people. They petitioned that the Jesuits might be sent away, as their abolition has been since prayed for in France and other countries.

All the tribunals of China urged their being immediately sent to Macao, which is considered as a place without the limits of the empire, and the possession of which has always been left to the Portu{guese, with a Chinese garrison.

Youtchin had the humanity to consult the tribunals and governors, whether any danger could result from conveying all the Jesuits to the province of Canton. While waiting the reply, he ordered three of them to be introduced to his presence, and addressed them in the following words, which Father Parennin, with great ingenuousness, records :-"Your Europeans, in the province of Fo-Kien, intended to abolish our laws, and dis turbed our people. The tribunals have denounced them before me. It is my positive duty to provide against such disorders: the good of the empire requires

They began by baptising the three princes, and many persons of their household. These neophytes had the misfortune to displease the emperor on some points which merely respected military duty. About this very period the indig-it.... What would you say were I to nation of the whole empire against the missionaries broke out into a flame. All the governors of provinces, all the Colaos, presented memorials against them The accusations against them were urged so far that the three princes, who had become disciples of the Jesuits, were put

into irons.

send over to your country a company of bonzes and lamas to preach their law? How would you receive them?.... If you deceived my father, hope not also to deceive me.... You wish to make the Chinese Christians: your law, I well know, requires this of you. But in case yon should succeed, what should we beIt is clear that they were not treated come? the subjects of your kings. Chriswith this severity simply for having been{tians believe none but you: in a time of baptised, since the Jesuits themselves acknowledge in their letters, that they experienced no violence, and that they were even admitted to an audience of the emperor, who honoured them with some presents. It is evident, therefore, that the emperor Youtchin was no persecutor; and, if the princes were confined in a

confusion they would listen to no voice but yours. I know that, at present, there is nothing to fear; but on the arrival of a thousand, or perhaps ten thousand vessels, great disturbances might ensue."

"China, on the north, joins the kingdom of Russia, which is by no means

contemptible; to the south it has the Kien-long, completed the satisfaction of Europeans, and their kingdoms, which the nation, by obliging all the missionaare still more considerable; and to theries who were in concealment throughout

Of the pretended Atheism of China.

west, the princes of Tartary, with whom his empire to remove to Macao: a sowe have been at war eight years...... lemn edict prevented them from ever Laurence Lange, companion of Prince returning. If any appear, they are ciIsmailoff, ambassador from the czar, re- villy requested to carry their talents quested that the Russians might have somewhere else. There is nothing of sepermission to establish factories in each { verity, nothing of persecution. I have of the provinces. The permission was been told that, in 1760, a Jesuit having confined to Pekin, and within the limits gone from Rome to Canton, and been inof Calcas. In like manner I permit you formed against by a Dutch factor, the to remain here and at Canton as long as Colao governor of Canton had him sent you avoid giving any cause of complaint. away, presenting him at the same time Should you give any, I will not suffer with a piece of silk, some provisions, and you to remain either here or at Canton." money. In the other provinces their houses and churches were levelled to the ground. At length the clamour against them redoubled. The charges most strenuously insisted upon against them were, that they weakened the respect of children for their parents, by not paying the honours due to ancestors; that they indecently brought together young men and women in retired places, which they called churches; that they made girls kneel before them, and inclosed them with their legs, and conversed with them, while in this posture, in under tones. To Chinese delicacy, nothing appeared more revolting than this. Their emperor, Youtchin even condescended to inform the Jesuits of this fact; after which he sent away the greater part of the missionaries to Macao, but with all that polite attention which perhaps the Chinese alone are capable of displaying.

Some Jesuits, possessed of mathematical science, were retained at Pekin; and among others, that same Parennin whom we have mentioned; and who, being a perfect master both of the Chi nese and of the Tartar language, had been frequently employed as an interpreter. Many of the Jesuits concealed themselves in the distant provinces; others even in Canton itself; and the affair was connived at.

The charge of Atheism, alleged by our theologians of the west, against the Chinese government at the other end of the world, has been frequently examined, and is, it must be admitted, the meanest excess of our follies and pedantic inconsistencies. It was sometimes pretended, in one of our learned faculties, that the Chinese tribunals or parliaments, were idolatrous; sometimes that they acknowledged no divinity whatever and these reasoners occasionally pushed their logic so far as to maintain, that the Chinese were, at the same time, atheists and idolaters.

In the month of October, 1700, the Sorbonne declared every proposition, which maintained that the emperor and the Colaos believed in God, to be heretical. Bulky volumes were composed in order to demonstrate, conformably to the system of theological demonstration, that the Chinese adored nothing but the material heaven.

Nil praeter nubes et coeli numen adorant. They worship clouds and firmament alone. But if they did adore the material heaven, that was their God. They resembled the Persians, who are said to have adored the sun: they resembled the anAt length, after the death of the Em-cient Arabians, who adored the stars. peror Youtchin, his son and successor, they were neither worshippers of idols

nor atheists. But a learned doctor, when it is an object to denounce from his tripod any proposition as heretical or obnoxious, does not distinguish with much clearness.

delivered once an excellent discourse in praise of the Chinese philosophy. He praised that ancient species of the human race, differing, as it does, in respect to the beard, the eyes the nose, the ears, and even the reasoning powers themselves;—he praised the Chinese, I say, for their adoration of a supreme God, and their love of virtue. He did that justice to the emperors of China, to the tribunals, and to the literati. The justice done to the bonzes was of a different kind.

Those contemptible creatures who, in 1700, created such a disturbance about the material heaven of the Chinese, did not know that, in 1689, the Chinese, having made peace with the Russians at Nicptchou, which divides the two einpires erected, in September of the same year, a marble monument, on which the following memorable words were engraved in the Chinese and Latin languages :— "Should any ever determine to re-a thousand pupils of all nations. In the kindle the flames of war, we pray the sovereign reign of all things, who knows the heart, to punish their perfidy," &c.

A very small portion of modern history is sufficient to put an end to these ridiculous disputes: but those who believe that the duty of man consists in writing commentaries on St. Thomas, or Scotus, cannot condescend to inform themselves of what is going on among the great empires of the world.

SECTION II.

It is necessary to observe, that this professor Wolfe had attracted around him

same university there was also a professor of theology, who attracted no one. This man, maddened at the thought of freezing to death in his own deserted hall, formed the design, which undoubtedly was only right and reasonable, of destroying the mathematical professor. He scrupled not, according to the practice of persons like himself, to accuse him of not believing in God.

Some European writers, who had never been in China, had pretended that the government of Pekin was atheistical. We travel to China to obtain clay for Wolfe had praised the philosophers of porcelain, as if we had none ourselves; Pekin; therefore Wolfe was an atheist. stuffs, as if we were destitute of stuffs; Envy and hatred seldom construct the and a small herb to be infused in water, best syllogisms. This argument of as if we had no simples in our own Lange, supported by a party and by a countries. In return for these benefits, protector, was considered conclusive by we are desirous of converting the Chi- the sovereign of the country, who disnese. It is a very commendable zeal; patched a formal dilemma to the mathebut we must avoid controverting thier matician. This dilemma gave him the antiquity, and also calling them idolators. option of quitting Halle in twenty-four Should we think it well of a capuchin, hours, or of being hanged; and as Wolfe if, after having been hospitably enter- was a very accurate reasoner, he did not tained at the chateau of the Montmo- fail to quit. His withdrawing deprived rencys, he endeavoured to persuade the king of two or three hundred thouthem that they were new nobility, like sand crowns a-year, which were brought the king's secretaries; or accused them into the kingdom in consequence of the of idolatry, because he found two or wealth of this philosopher's disciples. three statues of constables, for whom they cherished the most profound respect?

The celebrated Wolfe, professor of mathematics in the university of Halls,

This case should convince sovereigns that they ought not to be over ready to listen to calumny, and sacrifice a great man to the madness of a fool. But let us return to China.

Why should we concern ourselves, we who live at the extremity of the west,— why should we dispute with abuse and fury, whether there were fourteen princes or not before Fo-hi, emperor of China, and whether the said Fo-hi lived three thousand, or two thousand nine hundred years before our vulgar era? I should like to see two Irishmen quarrelling at Dublin, about who was the owner, in the twelfth century, of the estate I am now in possession of. Is it not clear, that they should refer to me, who possess the documents and titles relating to it? To my mind, the case is the same with respect to the first emperors of China, and the tribunals of that country are the proper resort upon the subject.

Dispute as long as you please about the fourteen princes who reigned before Fo-hi, your very interesting dispute cannot possibly fail to prove that China was at that period populous, and that laws were in force there. I now ask you, whether a people's being collected together, under laws and kings, involves not the idea of very considerable antiquity? Reflect how long a time is requisite, before by a singular concurrence of circumstances, the iron is discovered in the maine, before it is applied to purposes of agriculture, before the invention of the shuttle, and all the arts of life.

terday, descendants of the Celts, who have only just finished clearing the forests of our savage territories, suffer the Chinese and Indians to enjoy in peace their fine climate and their antiquity. Let us, especially, cease calling the Emperor of China, and the souba of the Deccan, idolaters. There is no necessity for being a zealot in estimating Chinese merit. The constitution of their empire is the only one entirely established upon paternal authority; the only one in which the governor of a province is punished, if, on quitting his station, he does not receive the acclamations of the people; the only one which has instituted rewards for virtue, while, everywhere else, the sole object of the laws is the punishment of crime; the only one which has caused its laws to be adopted by its conquerors, while we are still subject to the customs of the Burgundians, the Franks, and the Goths, by whom we were conquered. Yet, we must confess, that the common people, guided by the bonzes, are equally knavish with our own; that everything is sold enormously dear to foreigners, as among ourselves; that, with respect to the sciences, the Chinese are just where we were two hundred years ago; that, like us, they labour under a thousand ridiculous prejudices; and that they believe in talismans and judicial astrology, as we long did ourselves.

We must admit also, that they were astonished at our thermometer, at our method of freezing fluids by means of salt-petre, and at all the experiments of Torricelli and Otto de Guerick; as we were also, on seeing for the first time those curious processes. We add, that their physicians do not cure mortal diseases any more than our own; and

Some who multiply mankind by a dash of the pen, have produced very curious calculations. The Jesuit Petau, by a very singular computation, gives the world, two hundred and twenty-five years after the deluge, one hundred times as many inhabitants as can be easily conceived to exist on it at present. The Cumberlands and Whistons have formed calculations equally ridiculous; had these worthies only consulted the regis-that minor diseases, both here and in ters of our colonies in America, they would have been perfectly astonished, and would have perceived not only how slowly mankind increase in number, but that frequently instead of increasing they actually diminish.

Let us then, who are merely of yes

China, are cured by nature alone. All this, however, does not interfere with the fact, that the Chinese, for four thousand years, when we were unable even to read, knew everything essentially useful of which we boast at the present day.

I must again repeat, the religion of their

learned is admirable, and free from su- { Persians, as brokers and traders. Further, a Turk never takes the trouble to enquire, whether an Armenian is an Eutychian, a Jacobite. one of St. John's {Christians, or an Arian.

perstitions, from absurd legends, from dogmas insulting both to reason and nature, to which the bonzes give a thousand different meanings, because they really often have none. The most simple worship has appeared to them the best, for a series of forty centuries. They are, what we conceive Seth, Enoch, and Noah to have been; they are contented to adore one God in communion with the sages of the world, while Europe is divided between Thomas and Bonaventure, between Calvin and Luther, between Jansenius and Molina.

CHRISTIANITY.

Establishment of Christianity, in its Civil and Political State.

GOD forbid that we should dare to mix the sacred with the profane! We seek not to fathom the depths of the ways of Providence. We are men, and we address men only.

The theism of China, and the much to be respected books of Confucius, were { still less known to the nations of the west, than the Jewish rites.

The Arabians, who furnished the Romans with the precious commodities of India, had no more idea of the theology of the Brahmins, than our sailors who go to Pondicherry or Madras. The Indian women had from time immemorial enjoyed the privilege of burning themselves on the bodies of their husbands; yet these astonishing sacrifices, which are still practised, were as unknown to the Jews as the customs of America. Their books, which speak of Gog and Magog, never mention India.

time, Palestine was divided between the Pharisees, who began to believe the dogma of the resurrection, and the Sadducees, who regarded it only with contempt.

The ancient religion of Zoroaster was celebrated; but not therefore the more When Antony, and after him Augustus, understood in the Roman empire. It had given Judea to the Arabian, Herod, was only known, in general, that the magi (their creature and their tributary)—that admitted a resurrection, a hell, and a prince, a stranger among the Jews, be- paradise; which doctrine must at that came the most powerful of all kings. He time have made its way to the Jews borhad ports on the Mediterranean-Ptole-dering_on Chaldea; since, in Herod's mais and Ashkelon; he built towns; he erected a temple to Apollo at Rhodes, and one to Augustus in Cæsarea; he rebuilt that of Jerusalem from the foundation, and converted it into a strong citadel. Alexandria, the most commercial city Under his rule, Palestine enjoyed pro- in the whole world, was peopled with found peace. In short, barbarous as he Egyptians, who worshipped Serapis, and was to his family, and tyrannical towards consecrated cats; with Greeks, who phihis people, whose substance he consumed losophised; with Romans, who ruled; in the execution of his projects, he was and with Jews, who amassed wealth. looked upon as a Messiah. He worshipped { All these people were eagerly engaged in only Cæsar, and he was also worshipped money-getting, immersed in pleasure, inby the Herodians. furiate with fanaticism, making and unmaking religious sects, especially during the external tranquillity which they enjoyed when Augustus had shut the temple of Janus.

The sect of the Jews had long been spread in Europe and Asia; but its tenets were entirely unknown. No one knew anything of the Jewish books, although we are told that some of them had already been translated into Greek, in Alexandria. The Jews were known only as the Armenians are now known to the Turks and

The Jews were divided into three principal factions. Of these, the Samaritans called themselves the most ancient, be cause Samaria (then Sabastia), had sub