Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume I.djvu/313

301 FRENCH EMBASSY TO PERSIA. 301 Catholic truth, you not only fulfil with fervour your religious duties, but also show yourself full of zeal in exhorting others to make profession of the law of Jesus Christ. These are things that will certainly render you pleasing in the eyes of the Divine Majesty, besides gaining for you the praise of men, and augmenting your renown. You acknowledge, like a respectful and blessed daughter, the divine clemency, which has brought you out of the darkness of infidelity into the paths of truth and life. We implore you, in the name of the Son of God, to have the eyes of your soul raised towards the Lord, whose law you have embraced, to go on increasing in all good, and, like the industrious bee, never to cease gathering abundant merits, that you may present them to the Lord your God, who will place in his celestial garner the sheaf of your good works."* Nicholas wrote also to Denis, bishop of Tauris, from whom he had received a letter with that of the Khan of Persia. He congratulates him on his zeal for the pro- pagation of the faith amongst the Tartars, recommends the Franciscan missionaries to him, and exhorts him to hold fast to the true Catholic faith, of which he for- wards a summary. The whole of this correspondence of the Sovereign Pontiff, is of a purely religious character, and does not seem to bear any relation to the political object which the Tartars had chiefly in view ; but we must suppose that the Pope did not lose sight of this point in the negotiation, but communicated to Philip the Fair the proposals brought by the ambassadors ; since, in 1288, the king of France sent off an embassy to Persia. These envoys, whose names have not been preserved,
 * Wadding, vol. v. p. 170.