it is considered a sacrilege for him to presume to calculate on what day fall the new and full moon. Every one of inferior caste is obliged to learn this and similar matters, and to be guided in the most common occurrences of life by his religious teachers. He is forbidden by his institutions to lay any claim whatever to either sacred or profane science, or to intermeddle in any way with the one or the other. His religious leaders have engrossed, as their absolute and exclusive inheritance, all that is included within the term science, fearing lest, if an access, even to profane science, were given to the other tribes, this, by causing them to exert their own reason and judgment, should lead them to discover the heap of religious absurdities and extravagances imposed upon their credulity by an interested priesthood." Among the arts, the brahmins have left to the other castes only those whose exercise depends more upon bodily than on mental exertion; such as, music of wind instruments, painting, sculpture, and mechanics; and even these they have beset with so many sources of discouragement, that they have remained in their infancy, and none of them have ever approached perfection, they all being at the present time the same as they were two or three thousand years ago. 7. Such were the men to whom Robert de Nobili and his colleagues resolved to pay exclu 3 The Abbé Dubois. Letters, &c. pp. 88-90. This was published in 1823, and it is an accurate description of the state of Hindoo society to the present day, except where the light of European science and the labours of Protestant missionaries have diffused a more benign and intelligent influence. The Romish, especially the Jesuit missionaries, thought it more expedient to imitate, than to disturb, this abominable system, as will appear in the text. A. D. 1606. Their im moral cha racter. CHAP. III. Jesuits exclusive attention to the brahmins. 66 sive attention. If their character had been equal to their mental superiority over all other Hindoos, they would have been entitled to some consideration; but we learn from the same authority, that of the Jesuit missionaries themselves, that their morals were as much inferior to those of the subordinate castes, as they exceeded them in haughty pretensions. They are declared to be "moral monsters," and to answer to St. Paul's description of men in the lowest state of degradation. * Being filled with all unrighteousness, fornication, wickedness, covetousness, maliciousness; full of envy, murder, debate, deceit, malignity: whisperers, backbiters, haters of God, despiteful, proud, boasters, inventors of evil things, disobedient to parents, without understanding, covenant breakers, without natural affection, implacable, unmerciful: who knowing the judgment of God, that they which commit such things are worthy of death, not only do the same, but have pleasure in them that do them." Notwithstanding the infamy of their character, the missionaries found their influence was not confined to the lower orders. Unhappily for us, writes another of the Jesuits, they are spread universally, especially in the courts of princes, where they fill the highest employments, and have the management of most affairs of importance." 5 8. We may now form an idea of the arduous 4 The Abbé Dubois. Letters, pp. 100-104. Romans i. 29-31. 5 Father De la Lane. Lettres édifiantes. The translator remarks upon this passage-"Do not these brahmins seem perfect Jesuits?" It must be confessed, that in several respects the resemblance, both of the men and their designs, is close indeed. nature of the undertaking to convert these men to the faith of Jesus Christ. But it was not more difficult than that of the first teachers of Christianity, both to the Jews and to the Gentiles and our Lord, His Apostles, and those who followed them, have left all future preachers of the Gospel an example from which there ought never to have been any deviation. The primary object of the Lord Jesus' advent was, to seek and to save that which was lost. He knew that all were lost; but it was necessary for them to feel and deplore their prostrate and hopeless state, before they could apply to Him for pardon in a right disposition of mind. This necessity was universal: our Lord, therefore, was no respecter of persons. Though the difference between the Jew and the Samaritan, the Pharisee and the publican, were as great as that which subsists between the brahmin and the pariah; in each case the one standing highest, the other lowest, in public estimation; yet He made no exception in favour of the proud, the self-righteous, and the self-sufficient; and He received with equal freedom the humblest and the poorest, the most wretched and debased, who came to Him in penitence and prayer, in meekness and lowliness of heart." St. Paul followed in the steps of his Divine Master. Though himself a Pharisee before his conversion, yet he afterwards paid no more regard to that haughty sect, than to the most illiterate, vulgar, and disreputable part of the Jews or Gentiles. Of himself he declared, that he had a better pretence for glorying in temporal distinctions than most of his countrymen :7 but he never attempted, on these grounds, to 6 John iii. and iv. Luke xix. 1-10, &c. &c. A. D. 1606. CHAP. Jesuits assume the dignity and character of brahmins. They forge recommend himself or the Gospel, to his own or any other sect. The very circumstance of our Lord's selecting illiterate and obscure individuals for the first preachers of His religion, proves how far it was from His intention to court the great and the mighty, the rich and the wise. While this showed that their astonishing successes were to be attributed to the wisdom and the power of God; it tended also to encourage all sorts and conditions of men, to receive with equal confidence the offers of pardon and peace. Every individual was directed to the great atonement of Jesus on the cross, and to the substitution of His merits, for the redemption of the world. If then the scribes and pharisees were not more regarded by our Lord and His Apostles than the publican and Samaritan; neither ought the brahmin to be suffered to prefer a stronger claim to the Christian missionary's attention than the poorest outcast: and, though they should be admitted to equal privileges, yet it must be upon the clear understanding, that they lay aside all pretension to superior merit before that Being, who "puts down the mighty from their seats, and exalts them of low degree: fills the hungry with good things, and sends the rich empty away. 9. This religious principle, however, was at the antipodes of the Jesuits' policy, whose primary object was to conciliate the brahmins, supposing that by securing them, they should easily gain the a deed-re- rest of the Hindoos. For this purpose they did this impos- not scruple to compromise the truth of the Gospel and the liberty of the poor believer. Having announced themselves as brahmins of a superior flections on ture. 8 Luke i. 52. 9 order from the western world, they actually assumed heathen names, and conformed in every respect to the customs of that haughty and exclusive caste. There are several degrees of brahmins; and in order to give the more effect to his deception, R. de Nobili pretended to be one of the highest order: and "to stop the mouths of his opposers, and particularly of those who treated his character of brahmin as a deception, he produced an old, dirty parchment, in which he had forged, in the ancient Indian characters, a deed, showing that the brahmins of Rome were of much older date than those of India, and that the Jesuits of Rome descended, in a direct line, from the god Brama. Father Jouvenci, a learned Jesuit, tells us, in the History of his Order, something yet more remarkable; even that Robert de Nobili, when the authenticity of his smoky parchment was called in question by some Indian unbelievers, declared upon oath, before the assembly of the brahmins of Madura, that he really derived his origin from the god Brama. Is it not astonishing that this reverend father should acknowledge-is it not monstrous that he should applaud, as a piece of pious ingenuity, this detestable instance of perjury and fraud?" i The forging of the deed in question, with all the circumstances connected with it, was one of those pious frauds, "as they are improperly called," which the Church of Rome has so long 9 For instance, the assumed name of Robert de Nobili was Tatwa-bod, haca Swamy; that of R. C. J. Beschi, was Viramamuni. The heathen always knew them and their brethren best by their heathen names. 1 Jouvenci, Histoire des Jesuites: Norbert, Memoires Historiques sur les Missions de Malab. Tom. ii. Liv. xi. sec. 11. &c. Mosheim, Ecclesiastical History, Century 17, sec. 1, Asiatic Researches, Vol. xiv. p. 57. A. D. 1606. |