Considering that this code which inculcated humanity, repressed moral laxity, prohibited celibacy, and rigorously maintained the family-cult, was drawn up in the time of the extirpation of the Jesuit missions, the position assumed in regard to religious freedom appears to us one of singular liberality. "High and low alike," proclaims the 31st article, "may follow their own inclinations with respect to religious tenets which have obtained down to the present time, except as regards the false and corrupt school [Roman Catholicism]. Religious disputes have ever proved the bane and misfortune of this Empire, and must be firmly, suppressed." ... But the seeming liberality of this article must not be misinterpreted: [350] the legislator who made so rigid an enactment in regard to the religion of the family was not the man to proclaim that any Japanese was free to abandon the faith of his race for an alien creed. One must carefully read the entire Legacy in order to understand Iyeyasu's real position,--which was simply this: that any man was free to adopt any religion tolerated by the State, in addition to his ancestor-cult. Iyeyasu was himself a member of the Jodo sect of Buddhism, and a friend of Buddhism in general. But he was first of all a Shintoist; and the third article of his code commands devotion to the Kami as the first of duties:--"Keep your heart pure; and so long as your body shall exist, be diligent in paying honour and veneration to the Gods." That he placed the ancient cult above Buddhism should be evident from the text of the 52d article of the Legacy, in which he declares that no one should suffer himself to neglect the national faith because of a belief in any other form of religion. This text is of particular interest: "My body, and the bodies of others, being born in the Empire of the Gods, to accept unreservedly the teachings of other countries,--such as Confucian, Buddhist, or Taoist doctrines,--and to apply one's whole and undivided attention to them, would be, in short, to desert one's own master, and transfer one's loyalty to another. Is not this to forget the origin of one's being?"