No More Learning

[650] _Thee, Thomas, thee, the plaintive Ganges mourn'd. _--The
versification of the original is here exceedingly fine. Even those who
are unacquainted with the Portuguese may perceive it.

"Choraraote Thome, o Gange, o Indo,
Choroute toda a terra, que pizaste;
Mas mais te chorao as almas, que vestindo
Se hiao da Santa Fe, que lhe ensinaste;
Mas os anjos do ceo cantando, & rindo,
Te recebem na gloria que ganhaste. "


[651] _Like him, ye Lusians, simplest Truth pursue. _--It is now time to
sum up what has been said of the labours of the Jesuits. Diametrically
opposite to this advice was their conduct in every Asiatic country where
they pretended to propagate the gospel. Sometimes we find an individual
sincere and pious, but the great principle which always actuated them as
a united body was the lust of power and secular emolument, the
possession of which they thought could not be better secured than by
rendering themselves of the utmost importance to the see of Rome. In
consequence of these principles, wherever they came their first care was
to find what were the great objects of the fear and adoration of the
people. If the sun was esteemed the giver of life, Jesus Christ was the
Son of that luminary, and they were his younger brethren, sent to
instruct the ignorant. If the barbarians were in dread of evil spirits,
Jesus Christ came on purpose to banish them from the world, had driven
them from Europe,{*} and the Jesuits were sent to the East to complete
his unfinished mission. If the Indian converts still retained a
veneration for the powder of burned cow-dung, the Jesuits made the sign
of the cross over it, and the Indian besmeared himself with it as usual.
Heaven, or universal matter, they told the Chinese, was the God of the
Christians, and the sacrifices of Confucius were solemnized in the
churches of the Jesuits. This worship of Confucius, Voltaire, with his
wonted accuracy, denies. But he ought to have known that this, with the
worship of _tien_, or heaven, had been long complained of at the court
of Rome (see Dupin), and that after the strictest scrutiny the charge
was fully proved, and Clement XI.
, in 1703, sent Cardinal Tournon to the
small remains of the Jesuits in the East with a papal decree to reform
these abuses. But the cardinal, soon after his arrival, was poisoned in
Siam by the holy fathers. Xavier, and the other Jesuits who succeeded
him, by the dexterous use of the great maxims of their master Loyola,
_Omnibus omnia, et omnia munda mundis_, gained innumerable proselytes.
They contradicted none of the favourite opinions of their converts, they
only baptized, and gave them crucifixes to worship, and all was well.
But their zeal in uniting to the see of Rome the Christians found in the
East descended to the minutest particulars. And the native Christians of
Malabar were so violently persecuted as heretics that the heathen
princes took arms in their defence in 1570 (see Geddes, Hist. Malabar),
and the Portuguese were almost driven from India. Abyssinia, by the same
arts, was steeped in blood, and two or three Abyssinian emperors lost
their lives in endeavouring to establish the pope's supremacy. An order
at last was given from the throne to hang every missionary, without
trial, wherever apprehended, the emperor himself complaining that he
could not enjoy a day in quiet for the intrigues of the Romish friars.
In China, also, they soon rendered themselves insufferable. Their skill
in mathematics and the arts introduced them to great favour at court,
but all their cunning could not conceal their villainy. Their
unwillingness to ordain the natives raised suspicions against a
profession thus monopolized by strangers; their earnest zeal in amassing
riches, and their interference with, and deep designs on, secular power
(the fatal rock on which they have so often been shipwrecked), appeared,
and their churches were levelled with the ground. About 90,000 of the
new converts, together with their teachers, were massacred, and their
religion was prohibited. In Japan the rage of government even exceeded
that of China, and in allusion to their chief object of adoration, the
cross, several of the Jesuit fathers were crucified by the Japanese, and
the revival of the Christian name was interdicted by the severest laws.
Thus, in a great measure, ended in the East the labours of the society
of Ignatius Loyola, a society which might have diffused the greatest
blessings to mankind, could honesty have been added to their great
learning and abilities. Had that indefatigable zeal which laboured to
promote the interests of their own brotherhood and the Roman see been
employed in the real interests of humanity and civilization, the great
design of diffusing the law of Heaven, challenged by its author as the
purpose of the Lusiad, would have been amply completed, and the remotest
hordes of Tartary and Africa ere now had been happily civilized.