religion from the countries west of China were still welcomed at court, and decrees were promulgated applauding the beneficial tendencies of the system. When a mandarin ventured to reprove the third Ming emperor on this account, he was silenced by the inquiry, Did he wish to imitate Han Wen-kung? In A.D. 1426 the next occupier of the throne ordered examinations to be instituted for those who wished to become monks. At this time, as had sometimes happened before, the attention of the government was called to the increasing property in land of the monasteries. In 1450 it was forbidden to any monastic establishment to have more than 60 meu (6000 feet square) of land. What was in excess of this was given to the poor to cultivate, they paying taxes to the emperor. Similar acts of interference with the property of the monasteries are recorded in the preceding dynasty. In the sixteenth century, in the time of Kia-tsing, some attempts to revive persecution were made by Confucian memorialists, but all they succeeded in effecting was the destruction of the Buddhist chapel belonging to the palace. High titles were still granted to certain priests who stated that they came from the West. They were called shang-shi, "superior teacher," instead of ti-shi, "imperial teacher," the title given in the Yuen dynasty.

In the latter years of the Ming dynasty, new enemies to Buddhism arrived in China. The Roman Catholic missionaries followed the Mohammedans in protesting against idolatry. The banner of hostility could be raised by Christians with more reason against this religion than against the national one, of which the worship of images forms no part. Matteo Ricci had a controversy with a noted Buddhist priest residing at Hang-cheu. It was with a show of reason pressed upon the Buddhists that if their theory of transmigration were true, it would be wrong to enter into wedlock for fear of marrying one's own father or mother. The Buddhists suggested in reply, that divination

would reveal if such were the fact. Su Kwang-k'i, Ricci's most illustrious convert, wrote a short tract against Buddhism, in which a few of its principal doctrines are discussed and condemned in a popular style. It is concluded by a chapter against ancestral worship. The work is called P'i-shih-shi-chu-wang, "The Errors of the Buddhists Exposed."

Of the Manchu emperors, Shun-chi was a friend to Buddhism, and wrote prefaces to some works of the followers of Bodhidharma, but his son K'ang-hi felt in his later life great repugnance to all religions except the Confucian. His sentiments are recorded in the "Sacred Edict," or Imperial book of moral instructions for the common people.