ASSISTANCE OF TIIE MISSIONARIES. 99 who attacks the heavens," for " General aided by heaven;" meaning to indicate that the revolution had been sanctioned and consecrated by success. After having issued a manifesto, and published it in all the provinces, he marched openly upon Si-ngan-Fou, the capital of the empire ; and his advance was so rapid, that the Emperor had scarcely time to escape into Thibet. Hoang-Tchao then entered the capital, and declaring himself Emperor, put to death the members of the Imperial family who had not had time to escape. The Christianity planted by Olopen, and which had long been so flourishing under the Thang dynasty, had doubtless much to suffer during these political disturb- ances, and it is probably from this epoch we may date the decay and ruin of the missions of China. The preaching of the Gospel in the Celestial Empire was however not entirely abandoned, and the increasing difficulties it had to contend with, the massacre of foreigners above alluded to, and the cessation of com- mercial relations of China with Persia and Arabia, could not put a stop to it. According to the text of an Arab writer named Aboulfarage, cited by Golius in his notes to the astronomical treatise of Alfergany, it is known that in the latter half of the tenth century, a Christian monk of Nadjran, in Arabia Felix, was directed by his Patriarch to go with some other re- ligious men to China, and afford assistance to the Chris- tians of that country. Renaudot * has, with his cus- tomary sagacity, perceived the value of this isolated passage, and recognised in the patriarch mentioned by Golius, the Archbishop of Seleucia on the Tigris, who
- Anc. Relation, &c. ; p. 269.
H 2
