Directory_and_Chronicle_1841 — Page 688

670

Biographical Notice of P. Prémare.

DEC.

archs, who founded the Chinese empire. The sense of certain passages, sometimes obscure, the various interpretations which had been given at different periods, the allegories contained in the Book of Odes, the enigmas of the Book of Changes (Yih King), and the analysis of certain symbols, were to the missionaries who were prepossessed of these ideas, so many arguments suited to strengthen them in an opi- nion, which they regarded as favorable to the propagation of Chris- tianity. It was certainly with that view, and not to excite a vain curiosity, that they applied themselves to spreading these extraordi nary notions.

P. Prémare speaking of his works, to which we shall allude here- after, wrote as follows to. Fourmont: "The ulterior, and highest end to which I have devoted this notice, and all my other writings, is to cause, if I can, that all the world may know that the Christian reli- gion is as old as the world, and that the God-man was most cer- tainly known, by that or those men who invented the hieroglyphics of China, and composed the King (). Here you see, my dear friend, the only motive that has sustained and animated me, during more than thirty years in studies, which, without this, had been very tedious."

(經)

But the perseverance which Prémare and his brethren directed to sustain these opinions, and the strong conclusions which some wished to deduce therefrom, brought upon them much dislike, from those men who did not partake of their views, and who therefore con. nected the inquiry with the great quarrel between the Jesuits and Dominicans, about the meaning of the Chinese rites and ceremonies, and the pretended atheism of their literature. Men who were less passionate did not abstain from disapproving of the opinions of the Jesuits upon Chinese antiquity; and Fourmont, to whom P. Prémare had communicated his ideas on that subject, avowed that they had never appeared probable to him, because, said he, "the ancient Chi- nese were not prophets."

It was very natural to receive so strange a scheme with distrust, and one of which the consequences might be so serious; but it was less just to suspect the intelligence or the good faith of respectable men, who were not less distinguished for their science than for their uprightness. It were better to examine the texts upon which they rested their assertions, and to see if those texts were not susceptible of more natural interpretations than those which they proposed. This is what few persons at that period were able to attempt; and what has been done since, in a manner to clear Prémare and his compa-