continued his patronage, but the Buddhist priests, apprehensive lest the new sect should eclipse and prejudice their own, endeavoured to stop its course; a persecution followed, which, at first, diminished the number of the faithful; but, after a time, two able advocates were raised up, who brought the new religion again into notice. The emperor Sŭh-tsung founded several Christian churches; and, in order to perpetuate the memory of his good deeds, the tablet, in question, was erected, A.D. 782.
Some have affected to doubt the authenticity of this inscription, imagining it to be a mere trick of the Jesuits, to get the Chinese to credit the Christian religion. That this was not the case, we may infer from the fact, that the Chinese were the first to discover the stone, and that neither they nor the Jesuits understood the Syrian part of the inscription, till it was translated in Malabar. Besides, were it a pious fraud, the Jesuits would have been more likely to ascribe the introduction of Christianity, to the efforts of the Latin, rather than the Syrian church; and, had they made any pretensions of the kind, the other orders of the Romish clergy would have exposed their hypocrisy. We conclude, therefore, that the inscription is a genuine record of the labours of the Syrian Christians, during the seventh and eighth centuries, in China. A fac-simile of it may be seen in the library of the Vatican at Rome, and a full translation in Kicherer's China Illustrata.
Mosheim informs us, that in the end of the seventh century, the Nestorians penetrated into China, where they established several churches; and that A.D. 820,[1]
- ↑ In the year 846, the Syrian priests were included in the prohibition of heterodox systems, in the proclamation of Tang Woo-tsung.
