Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 397

1839,

Defense of an Essay &c.

359

call God, we ought to take the Chinese name of this Being to render Elohim and Theos in all cases, though we should find that the Chinese have never used this word, as the general name of their objects of worship. We should only differ from him, in contending that we must seek for, and use, the absolute name of this Being, and not content ourselves with one of his titles, such as Sháng ti, which is a mere relative term. I should agree to this; for if the Chinese really know the Being we call God, and have in their language a name for Him I do not see how we could be justified in neglecting this name, or using any other word to render Elohim and Theos. We should be bound, I think, if these were the circumstances in which we found the Chinese, to tell them that Jehovah—the revealed God—was the same Being they had all along worshiped under this Chinese name, and that we now merely proposed, by the light derived from the Sacred Scriptures, to make Him more fully and perfectly known unto them. This I never would have denied ; but when my “Essay was written, I supposed that this was not contended for by any mis- sionary in China; therefore my argument is conducted, from the beginning to the end, upon the supposition that the Chinese know no being who can truly and properly be called God.

(4

Dr. Legge being the affirmant in this case the onus probandi is with him; this however he is so far from perceiving, that he very amus- ingly sets us the task of finding an instance in which Shángti can not be rendered God (propriè), when in my Essay," which was before him, I had already denied the Chinese had any word in their language which could be so rendered, which made it clearly Dr. Legge's duty to furnish us with the grounds which would justify him, in so translating Shángtí, in a single instance. This was the more incumbent or Dr. Legge, as Dr. Medhurst, in his “ Inquiry," admitted, as we have shown, that Shúngti is never said to have created the heavens and the earth, or to be selfexistent; and in his "Reply," that the Chinese were ignorant of the true God; and as Dr. Bowring, who also wrote previously to Dr. Legge, so unhesitatingly affirms that the Chinese do not know God. Instead of giving some good and approved definition of the sense, in which the word God is to be understood when used propriè, (which is the only sense in which the word God is ever used as he contends, and in which sense Shangti corresponds to it) and using this as a test to prove that Shángtí is properly God, he contents himself with the following petitio principii.

"The proof of this assertion is to he sought by making the largest possible collection of examples, in which the expression is used, and