No More Learning

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. But
though the Jesuits have failed, they have afforded a noble lesson to
mankind.

"Though fortified with all the brazen mounds
That art can rear, and watch'd by eagle eyes,
Still will some rotten part betray the structure
That is not bas'd on simple honesty.
"

{*} This trick, it is said, has been played in America within these
twenty years, where the notion of evil spirits gives the poor Indians
their greatest misery. The French Jesuits told the Six Nations, that
Jesus Christ was a Frenchman, and had driven all evil demons from
France; that he had a great love for the Indians, whom he intended also
to deliver, but taking England in his way, he was crucified by the
wicked Londoners.

[652] _The dying. _--The innumerable superstitions performed on the banks
of the river Ganges, afford a pitiable picture of the weakness of
humanity. The circumstances here mentioned are literally true. It is no
uncommon scene for the English ships to be surrounded with the corpses
which come floating down this hallowed stream.

[653]

_Pegu, whose sons (so held old faith) confess'd
A dog their sire. --_

The tradition of this country boasted this infamous and impossible
original. While other nations pretend to be descended of demi-gods, the
Peguans were contented to trace their pedigree from a Chinese woman and
a dog; the only living creatures which survived a shipwreck on their
coast. --See Faria.

[654] _A pious queen their horrid rage restrain'd. _--Thus in the
original:

"Aqui soante arame no instrumento
Da geracao costumao, o que usarao
Por manha da Raynha, que inventando
Tal uso, deitou fora o error nefando. "


[655] _And 'mid white whirlpools down the ocean driven. _--See the same
account of Sicily, Virg. AEn. iii.