The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 16Dryden, John
History
The works of John Dryden, now first collected in eighteen volumes. Volume 16
Dryden, John
English literature
This illustrious conversion was followed with answerable success. Many
who had a glimmering of the truth, and feared to know it yet more
plainly, now opened their eyes, and admitted the gospel light; amongst
the rest, a young man of five-and-twenty years of age, much esteemed for
the subtlety of his understanding, and educated in the most famous
universities of Japan. He was come to Amanguchi, on purpose to be made a
Bonza; but being informed that the sect of Bonzas, of which he desired
to be a member, did not acknowledge a first Principle, and that their
books had made no mention of him, he changed his thoughts, and was
unresolved on what course of living he should fix; until being finally
convinced, by the example of the doctor, and the arguments of Xavier, he
became a Christian. The name of Laurence was given him; and it was he,
who, being received by Xavier himself into the Society of Jesus,
exercised immediately the ministry of preaching with so much fame, and so
great success, that he converted an innumerable multitude of noble and
valiant men, who were afterwards the pillars of the Japonian church.
As to what remains, the monasteries of the Bonzas were daily thinned, and
grew insensibly to be dispeopled by the desertion of young men, who had
some remainders of modesty and morality. Being ashamed of leading a
brutal life, and of deceiving the simple, they laid by their habits of
Bonzas, together with the profession, that, coming back into the world,
they might more easily be converted. These young Bonzas discovered to
Xavier the mysteries of their sects, and revealed to him their hidden
abominations, which were covered with an outside of austerity.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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