e 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; t