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218 mother church, in order to expose her ceremonies to shame.

On reviewing the three systems, we find that Confucius taught his disciples nothing definite concerning God or the future world; his scheme of cosmogony is irrational and unsatisfactory; and his compliance with the common superstitions, inconsistent and time-serving. The doctors of Eternal Reason make use of some expressions respecting an underived and all-pervading principle; but they have mixed up so much superstitious nonsense with their system, and are such gross idolaters in practice, that we must pronounce them as far from the truth, as the philosophic sect. While the religion of Buddha, imported from the west, though it talks about the retributions of a future life, and professes to manifest much compassion; yet in denying a first principle, and a last end; in contradicting the existence of an everlasting God, and eternal retribution; in deriving all things from nothing, and in making all things revert to nihility again, as the essence of being and the summit of bliss; has deluded the inhabitants of China, still more than their indigenous systems, and left them to the blackness of darkness for ever.

It is very remarkable, however, that all the sects in China acknowledge a trinity. The Confucians speak of the three powers of nature—heaven, earth, and man; the Taouists have some references to the "three pure ones," who combine in themselves the essence of eternal reason; and the Buddhists speak of the "three precious ones," viz., the past, present, and future Buddhas. In whatever these notions originated, the coincidence is striking, and deserves to be noted by those, who think