Among the notable events connected with the latter was the arrival in China of some Dominican and Franciscan missionaries, and their surprise at discovering the idolatrous practices of the Jesuits. Having never suspected even the possibility of the teachings of the Church being so tortured as to furnish apology for idolatry, they considered the conduct of the Jesuits "a real scandal," which deserved to be rebuked. What seemed to them as especially censurable was the fact that the Jesuits had taught their neophytes to use the Chinese term "_King-Tien_," to express the idea of God--not as the Creator of the universe, but as the presiding Deity over a multitude of other deities, each having a separate sphere of sovereignty. To them it was not easy to conceive of anything more likely to undermine Christianity, because by limiting or lessening in any way the sovereign attributes of God, the whole Christian system would topple and fall. They, accordingly, notified the apostolic vicar in China, as the immediate representative of the Church there, of this unscrupulous and unchristian conduct of the Jesuits, in order, if possible, to apply the proper corrective and remove the "scandal" from the Church. The vicar did not have much to do to discover that the accusations of the monks against the Jesuits were true; and when this became known to him, he not only condemned their idolatry, but "severely censured them" for practicing it. The Jesuits, by way of defense, attempted to explain why they had applied an idolatrous Chinese term to the God of the Christians, and in doing so exhibited their accustomed sophistry--in which they have always been adepts--in such way as to convince the vicar, as well as the Dominican and Franciscan monks, of their entire want of sincerity and candor, to say nothing of their loss of Christian integrity. They pretended that "the honors paid to Confucius were merely civil ceremonies, with which the Christians did not associate any religious ideas whatever, and that the word _King-Tien_, in the Chinese language, simply conveyed the idea of God as understood by Christians." This, they said, they were informed by the Chinese mandarins and learned men. Hence, they argued that unless the idolatrous worship they had adopted were allowed to prevail, it would be impossible to obtain sufficient influence over the Chinese to draw them to Christianity--the precise meaning of which was, that unless they were permitted to practice the idolatrous rites of heathenism, the Chinese could never be induced to become Christians. This argument was thoroughly Jesuitical, and failed to mislead either the vicar apostolic or the Dominican and Franciscan monks, all of whom could see through the thin disguise with which the Jesuits attempted to conceal their ultimate purpose of bringing the Church authorities, with the pope at their head, in obedience to them. It did not require any Chinese learning for them to understand that it was impossible, in