Directory_and_Chronicle_1850 — Page 405

1850

Defense of an Essay &c.

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rectness of this hypothesis, but could not bring himself to blot out what he had written. The extreme improbability, that the Patriarchs were acquainted with the mysterious mode of subsistence of the Di- vine Being, we should suppose would have deterred any one from re- garding such a supposition; but Dr. Medhurst was at that time car- ried away with the idea of proving that Shangti was the true God. Most persons will, I think, agree with me, that if the Chinese in their high antiquity really derived a knowledge of the doctrine of the Tri- nity by tradition from the Patriarchs, they must have had a much bet- ter and fuller tradition of what the faith of the Patriarchs was than we have in the Bible, for certainly no man can deduce the doctrine of the Trinity from the Pentateuch, or shew from it that the Patriarchs held this doctrine. We think this a striking instance to show the impor- tance of our being acquainted with the mood in which Dr. Medhurst is, and the point he is proposing to prove at the time he is writing, to enable us to form a just estimate of the value of any opinion advanced by him. We have in this instance a clear statement of the very materialism which shocked Dr. Medhurst when he wrote his State and Prospects of China." In the passage quoted by Dr. M. from the Li Kı, or Book of Rites, the 'i, primordial substance, is consider- ed as the great extreme, or first principle, instead of Li E. which is frequently, perhaps most frequently, so regarded; and yet Dr. Med- hurst rejoices at the knowledge of God there displayed.

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The difficulties in the way of regarding the Chinese Shingti as en- titled to be called God (proprié) are, to my mind insuperable.

1st. I have never seen any assertion, produced from any Chinese writer, that states his self-existence from eternity. Dr. Medhurst ad- mits in his "Inquiry" p. 5, that he has never found such a passage, but seeks to do away with the effects of this fatal admission on Shangt,'s claim to be regarded as truly and properly God, by adding that " We nowhere meet with a single passage which speaks of his origin.” But this surely is not enough. Self-existence from eternity is not such a matter-of-courge appendage to a Ruler, that it must, if writers only keep silence about it, be inferred. This is an inadmissible escape from the proof manifestly demanded of a point essential to the support of the cause of Shingti. It amounts to this, nobody has predicated this of Shangti, therefore we will infer it; or in other words, as the point is essential to us, we will beg the question. But to this we can not consent. The Chinese may never have conceived of, or spoken of any being or thing as existing from eternity, in which case the in- ference would be against the supposition that they regarded Shangh

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