Page:Christianity in China, Tartary, and Thibet Volume II.djvu/241

Rh country. The conversions that he effected were so numerous, that the jealousy of the Bonzes was excited, and they raised violent persecutions against him; and finding himself attacked on all sides by the most injurious accusations and calumnies, he appealed to the magistrates, convicted his enemies of falsehood, and then generously pardoned them. The sagacity, patience, and strength of mind that he had displayed during the exercise of his ministry had struck Father Ricci so powerfully, that he had not hesitated to nominate him his successor.

Father Lombard, though feeling profound respect and admiration for the founder of the mission, did not entirely coincide in the opinions formed by Father Ricci of the religious and philosophical doctrines of China. Father Ricci, after having studied from the very commencement of his apostleship the character and genius of the nation whom he had been called to evangelise, had come to the conclusion that the best means that could be adopted for bringing the Chinese to a knowledge of the truth, would be to subscribe partly to the praises unceasingly lavished upon Confucius by both nation and government, by whom he was regarded as the wise man, par excellence, the master of all science, and the legislator of the empire. He thought that in the doctrines advanced by this philosopher as to the nature of God, he found much that bore a considerable resemblance to those of Christianity, and that Tien, or Heaven as conceived by the educated classes, was not the material and visible one, but the true God, the Lord of Heaven, the Supreme Being, invisible and spiritual, of infinite perfection, the creator and preserver of all things, the