human society does not present to us a single individual who, being involved in the darkness of heathenism, was ever able, by the unassisted efforts of his own mind, to burst through the clouds and gloom that surrounded him, and, shaking off the load of superstition, to rise to such an adoration of the One living and true God, as Natural Religion herself would approve.

We shall now briefly take a survey of Paganism in the latter ages of the world, and in our own times.

The Chinese are a people celebrated for their civilization. Many of their public works, both for the vastness. of the design, the greatness of the execution, and for their utility and ingenuity, are said far to excel any thing known in this country. They are also said to have had the knowledge of many discoveries in the arts of life, long before they were known in Europe. According to their own proverb, "The Chinese have two eyes, the Europeans one, and other men, none at all." They are said to be divided into three sects.

The founder of the first sect was Lao-Kiun. They are called the Immortals. This name they derive from a certain liquor, invented by their founder, which he affirmed would, if they drank it, make them immortal. Pretensions of so absurd and ridiculous a kind, sufficiently mark him out for an impostor. His followers must either be the most obstinate beings in the world, who will not swallow the potion and live for ever; or, the most credulous of the human race, who see the draught administered without effect, and yet persevere in their attachment to the doctrine of their founder. He is said to have lived about five hundred years before the birth of our Saviour. The trial that has been made of his liquor, for above two thousand years, and which, we are sure, has never in one case suc

ceeded, one would think sufficient; and yet it would appear that his disciples are as tenacious of their belief as ever. His followers worship him and other dead men, whom they have deified.

The disciples of Confucius are the second sect, and it is composed of the learned. He appears to have been a great political philosopher and legislator. Of the immortality of the soul, and of a future state of retribution,— truths essential to religion, he seems to have known little, and taught less. He is worshipped as a god by his followers, and temples and statues are erected to him in most of the towns of China. The worshippers of the idol Fo, or Fohi, are, by much, the most numerous sect. They style him the only god of the world. He is said to have been brought into India, a little after the death of our Saviour. This sect believes in the transmigration of souls.

The Chinese are extremely addicted to superstition. Every house has its altar and its deities. Their gods are of wood, and so credulous are their votaries, that when their houses are on fire, they hold the gods to the flames, in order to extinguish them. When they have sacrificed liberally to their gods, they expect ample returns of assistance and protection; and if disappointed, they sue them for damages, and obtain decrees against them from their mandarins or magistrates. The public morals of the Chinese appear, from the best accounts we have of them, to be in the lowest state of degradation.

"From the accounts of those who have resided in China, there does not seem to be much reason to boast of their virtue. On the contrary, their morals appear to be fully as bad as those of the ancient heathens. It is allowed that they take great care of their outward behaviour, more, perhaps, than is taken in any part of the world besides; that what

ever they do or say is so contrived that it may have a good appearance, please all, and offend none; and that they excel in outward modesty, gravity, good words, courtesy, and civility. But, notwithstanding this, it is said that the sin against nature is extremely common,-that drunkenness is considered as no crime,-that every one takes as many concubines as he can keep, that many of the common people pawn their wives in time of need, and some lend them for a month, or more, or less, according as they agree, that marriage is dissolved on the most trifling occasions, that sons and daughters are sold whenever their parents please (and that is frequently),—that many of the rich, as well as the poor, when they are delivered of daughters, stifle and kill them,-that those who are more tenderhearted, will leave them under a vessel, where they expire in great misery,—and finally, that notwithstanding this, they all, except the learned, plead humanity and compassion against killing other living creatures, thinking it a cruel thing to take that life which they cannot give."*

"It is very remarkable," says Montesquieu, "that the Chinese whose lives are guided by rites, are, nevertheless, the greatest cheats upon the earth. This appears chiefly in their trade, which, in spite of its natural tendency, has never been able to make them honest. He who buys of them ought to carry with him his own weights; every merchant having three sorts, the one heavy for buying, another light for selling, and another of the true standard for those who are upon their guard." It is nothing more than we should expect, that they who sue their gods will, if they can, cheat their neighbours. In perfect unison with this, is the

• Gospel its Own Witness, p. p. 96, 97. + Spirit of Laws, Book xix. c. 20.

account given of them in Lord Anson's voyages, and by other navigators. Lying, cheating, stealing, and all the little arts of chicanery abound amongst them; and if you detect them in a fraud, they calmly plead the custom of the country. Yet, as a respectable writer observes, these are the persons whom Tindal, in his "Christianity as old as the creation," affirms to be so "superior to Christians in relation to moral virtues, that it may seem necessary that they should send missionaries to teach us the use and practice of Natural Theology, as we send missionaries to them to teach them Revealed Religion." In the streets of Pekin alone, it is said, that there are upwards of three thousand children annually exposed!*

In the beginning of the last century, those missionaries of the church of Rome, the Jesuits, are said to have had in China, more than three hundred churches, and about three hundred thousand Christians, such as they were. The Jesuits, finding the proneness of the natives to idolatry too inveterate to be easily removed, entered into a compromise with them, and, provided they would acknowledge the Divinity of Christ, and the vicegerency of the Pope, tolerated their worshipping the Sun, Confucius, and the souls of their ancestors. This practice was, by the Dominicans, and some other orders, justly represented as idolatrous. A strong representation being made to the Pope on the subject, a Bull was issued, forbidding all such practices, as utterly inconsistent with Christianity, (even Popes have sometimes done good things), and commanding the worship of only one God. The connexion of those who were called Christians, with a foreign Head,

VOL. I.

• Bishop Porteus' Sermons, Vol. 1, p. 312.

F

and the condemnation of their idolatry by him, awakened the jealousy of the Chinese government, procured the proscription of their christian churches, and the expulsion of the teachers from China. As the Jesuits preached Christianity without the Bible, every monument of it was gone, when they were expelled. Had they given their disciples the Bible, they would have left Christianity embodied; and, though its light might have been confined, it could not easily have been extinguished.

If we are to believe the representations which have been made of the preaching of the Jesuits to the Chinese, it was not Christianity, but a doctrine in direct opposition to it that they introduced, and endeavoured to establish in that country, and consequently Christianity lost nothing by the suppression of what were called, the christian churches in China. The following is an abridgment of what is said to have been the address of the principal missionary to the Chinese, who, as he himself states, bore the Pope's commission to instruct that people. Having represented to them the cruelty and tyranny of kings and princes, and especially of the Emperor of Rome, who reigned over the greatest part of the world before our Saviour's advent, he gives this account of the circumstances which attended our Saviour's appearance:-" To rectify this, God resolves to send his own Son to subdue these tyrants, and to reduce things to order again. Well! at length the heavens appear more glorious than ever before: a wonderful light, bright and glorious, that outshone the sun by ten thousand degrees, breaks forth. Great noises are heard in the air, with most wonderful and delightful music; and at length a prodigious army, of more than a thousand thousand millions of angels, appears in sight; before whom marches a chariot of a prodigious