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peror's confirmation of the proceedings of the viceroy and the mandarins. Four Dominicans, companions of the prelate, were detained in prison three months after his execution, and then privately strangled; as were two Jesuits in the province of Kian-nan, the one an Italian, the other a Portuguese.

Independent of the general persecution which extended to all parts of the Chinese empire, another, no less cruel, broke out in the kingdom of Tonching and Cochin-china, which made formerly one of the most considerable provinces of China; but being at too great a distance from Pekin, the complaints of the people against the tyrannical government of the viceroys, who were vested with sovereign authority, never reached the ears of the reigning emperors. At length, unable any longer to bear the galling yoke, they suddenly emancipated themselves, by putting the existing viceroy to death, and electing a king of their own nation, who governed them with moderation and equity. The Chinese government commenced a war against the new king, who defended his subjects with such extraordinary valour and ability, that he obliged the Chinese to consent to a disgraceful peace; by which the independence of Tonquin and Cochin-china, as one united kingdom, was acknowledged; but upon this express condition, that the king should send a solemn embassy every three years to the emperor of China, which the Chinese vainly denominated a tribute. The war being thus successfully terminated, the king retired to one of his country palaces: and that he might enjoy unmolested a life of indolence, and abandon himself to voluptuous pleasures, he confided the government of his newly acquired dominions to one of the grandees of his court. This ambitious nobleman availing himself of the absence of his sovereign, seized on the throne; and acquiring the love and esteem of the people, he, in a short time, made himself master of the four principal provinces; expelled his sovereign, and obliged him to take refuge in the southern districts, where he suffered him to remain undisturbed. The fugitive prince seeing the authority of a rebellious subject so firmly established, that he had no hopes of recovering the whole, contented himself with this portion of his former domains, and formed a separate kingdom called 'Conching-china.

In the former kingdom of Tonquin, Roman Catholicism had been preached by Baldinotti, a Tuscan Jesuit, as early as the year 1626, who being joined soon after by other Jesuits from Europe, by their united labours they forined a considerable settlement in the short space of four years. priests were so much alarmed at their Jesuits were arrested and sent to Macao.

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however, consisting of different religious orders, in process of time established a numerous and flourishing settlement; for they reckoned in the four principal provinces no less than twentyfour thousand proselytes; who, at their own expense, had erected two hundred churches. But in the year 1721 the Christian religion was prohibited by a public edict; and the missionaries and other professors of Christianity were sought for in all parts, imprisoned, and many of them put to death. Yet, such was the zeal of the religious orders at this era, that no accounts of the dangers, sufferings, or even martyrdom of their brethren, could prevent a succession of missionaries from engaging in the same cause. For on the repeated solicitations of the Roman Catholics in Tonquin, secretly transmitted to Europe, several Jesuits came to Macao with an intention to go to their relief; but the difficulty of procuring a passage thither, detained them a considerable time; for they could not cross the province of Quantong, the boundary of Tonquin, since the missionaries in China and their disciples had been banished from Canton, and transported to Macao. The voyage by sea was nearly as impracticable, on account of the great danger of being taken by the Chinese cruisers, whose commanders had the strictest orders not to suffer any European to be set on shore in any part of the empire. After various unsuccessful attempts from the years 1732 to 1735, to engage some masters of trading ships, by the offer of an extravagant reward, to land them on the territory of Tonquin, they embarked privately on board a small vessel, at a little distance from Macao, accompanied by three Tonquinois proselytes; but unfortunately, being obliged to pass through a strait between the coasts of Canton and Tonquin, where the Chinese have a fort and a garrison to examine all vessels in their passage, they could not escape the vigilance of the soldiers who visited their bark, and discovered the Jesuits, though most carefully concealed. They were instantly taken on shore, and conducted to the tribunal of the mandarin at arms, who obliged them to submit to a long interrogatory examination, after which he confined them in a small fort, till he should receive instructions respecting them from the principal mandarins of the province residing at Canton. The orders from the capital were, to send back the Europeans and the Tonquinois to Macao under a safe guard, and for that purpose they directed that they should be conducted from town to town by the officers of the tribunals. As for the master of the bark, they commanded that he should be delivered up to the mandarin of the fort to be punished for his offence. Thus these zealous missionaries, after suffering the fatigues of travelling and incredible anxiety, had the mortification to arrive

at the same place from which they had taken their departure, after an absence of more than six months. But this disappointment, far from abating their zeal for a mission which they had for so many years been assiduous to accomplish, served only to render it more active; and animated them to make every effort to surmount the obstacles that detained them from a country they were so desirous to visit. Conversing on the subject with a confidential Chinese inhabitant of Macao, he undertook to go to Canton, and to gain over some officers of the tribunals by bribing them, to obtain from their mandarins a passport, which would enable him to hire a bark without any difficulty at Ancan, and to conduct them himself to Lo-feou the frontier town of Tonquin. Difficult as the execution of this project appeared to the Jesuits, the Chinese set out for Canton, and in a short time returned with an order signed by the principal mandarins, permitting the three Tonquinois to pass through the province of Quantong, to return into their own country with the Europeans who accompanied them. Furnished with this passport, the Chinese soon hired a vessel, on board of which were embarked six missionaries, viz. one German, and five Portuguese Jesuits. After divers perils, they arrived at Lofeou, where one of the Portuguese being taken ill, another and a catechist were left there to take care of him; and the four who remained, accompanied by two Tonquinois catechists, proceeded on their journey towards the capital. They embarked on board a small bark, and landed at a village called Balxa, where they remained two days, concealed in the house of a neophyte, one of the principal inhabitants of the place. But a banditti of Tonquinois vagabonds, obtaining information that some strangers were in the village, intending to advance further into the kingdom, they resolved, in the hope of plunder, to meet them on the opposite banks of a river which they must necessarily pass over. Accordingly, on the 12th of April, 1736, these banditti, being joined by some soldiers, and pretending to have an order from the mandarins, leaped furiously into the barge, as soon as it reached the shore, seized the four missionaries, the catechists, and the boatman who was a proselyte, loaded them with heavy fetters, and pillaged their baggage. From these wretches they were only delivered, after having been exposed four days and nights to hunger, thirst, the scorching heat of the sun, the stings of innumerable moschetos, and the insults of the soldiers, to be sent under a strong guard, and chained to each other, to the chief mandarin of the court at the capital, there to await their future destiny; which, horrid to relate, after nine months' imprisonment in the common prison, in which they confined their worst malefactors, termi

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nated in the following sentence, translated into the Portuguese language, that the prisoners might fully understand it. for you four, who are foreigners, the king orders that you shall be beheaded, for coming to preach the Christian law which he has proscribed throughout his dominions." This cruel sentence was carried into execution, amidst an immense concourse of people, and in the presence of the mandarins and other judges of the criminal tribunal. The sacrifice of these martyrs was followed by that of several neophytes and catechists; and the same cruel persecutions of the remaining proselytes extended to Cochin-china.

From this period we may likewise date the decline of the Roman Catholic religion in China; for the emperor Kien Long continued and confirmed the general prohibition against preaching the gospel in his dominions. But still he permitted a few Jesuits to reside at Pekin, to perform their functions in the three churches belonging to the French, Portuguese, Italian and German Jesuits, and a great number of proselytes frequented them without molestation; because he well knew that if they were denied this privilege, the skilful artists whom he wished to retain in his service, would soon leave him. At length in the year 1748, the persecution extended to the environs of Pekin, where the proselytes chiefly resided, who were commanded to renounce Christianity. Upon their refusal they were put to the torture; their property was confiscated; and their images, chaplets, relics, crosses, and other idolatrous objects of their devotion, were publicly trampled upon, and afterwards burnt.

The mission in the province of Nanking which had been the most flourishing of all the Roman Catholic establishments in China, under the auspices of the bishop of Nanking and eight Jesuit missionaries, and which at the commencement of the persecution in 1748, embraced sixty thousand professors of Christianity, was, in the course of the year 1750, totally subverted. Father Henriques superior of the Jesuits, and father Athemis his companion, were arrested, put in irons, thrown into prison, and carried before the viceroy, who constituted a new tribunal consisting of three mandarins to sit in judgment upon a frivolous accusation of rebellion brought against them by an apostate Chinese. Amongst other interrogatories, they were asked if the pope and their king knew that they were in China? To which having answered in the negative, they were sentenced to be strangled. This sentence was confirmed by the emperor, and they were executed in the prison, in the presence of the mandarins their judges. At the same time, several proselytes were condemned; some to suffer the bastinade, and others to

perpetual exile. The following year closes the correspondence of the French Jesuits remaining at Pekin, with their brethren in France, contained in the xxviiith volume of Lettres Edifiantes et Curieuses.

Having given this general sketch of the early promulgation of the gospel in the heathen world, it may not be improper briefly to state some of the principal causes of the failure of the Roman Catholic missions.

We shall not here endeavour to penetrate those secret providences of God, which he has been pleased to cover with shade; and to determine how far the idolatrous worship and dangerous errors of the church of Rome might have induced him to give up to destruction missions once so illustrious and flourishing. We shall confine ourselves to particulars, on which we may calculate with greater accuracy.

The Dominicans, Franciscans, and friars of other orders, who were first engaged in the mission to China, appear to have been men of a meek and quiet character, of great simplicity of manners, unadorned picty, and a self-denying mortified spirit. They so conformed their lives and conduct to the morals which they taught, that the pagan priests had no charge to bring against them but that of an attachment to the idolatrous rites of their church, and that of propagating doctrines which were evidently contrary to the common sense of mankind.

But no sooner had the Jesuits commenced that religious monopoly, which they afterwards maintained in all the kingdoms of Europe that professed the Roman Catholic faith, than the missionary establishments in parts beyond the seas assumed a different aspect. And though the number of proselytes, in the course of a few years, increased considerably; yet it was very soon perceived, that this rapid success could not be permanent; for ambition, worldly interest, temporal dignities, and political intrigues, were the tares which sprang up, and choked the seed which had been sown by their zealous predePermitted to build churches, they erected such magnificent edifices as astonished the sensible Chinese mandarins; they decorated them with such superb and costly ornaments, and covered their altars with such images and massy vessels of gold and silver, of the finest workmanship sent from France, Spain and Portugal, that the internal splendour of these sanctuaries surpassed in ostentation the palaces of the Chinese empeTheir crucifixes, and the shrines in which the host, that is to say, the consecrated wafers, were exposed to be adored by the people, in the service of the mass, were beset with diamonds, rubies, emeralds, and other precious stones; and the vestments of the officiating Jesuits vied in richness and external

rors.

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