EARLY TOKUGAWA TIMES
orders of the men appointed by the Taikō to restrain them. He had seen the Padres resume their preaching almost immediately after the issue of a prohibitory edict. He had seen the unprecedented spectacle of heimin (commoners) accepting from the alien creed a commission to oppose samurai authority. He had seen the persecuting intolerance of the foreign faith constitute a new menace to the tranquillity which it was his hope, and seemingly his mission, to restore to his tired countrymen. It can scarcely be doubted, therefore, that Iyeyasu was opposed to Christianity from the first. Besides, whether from policy or conviction, he was himself a devotee of Buddhism. He carried in his bosom an image of Amida, and in seventy-three battles he had donned no armour, avowedly trusting solely to the protection of the god he worshipped. The quality of this great leader's piety is not here a matter of concern. He may have been prompted mainly by a desire to win to his cause influences which, when opposed, had shown themselves strong and mischievous. But that a man who encouraged his followers to regard him as an incarnation of one of Yakushi's Arhats, and professed to consider a miniature effigy of Kuro Honzon better protection than cuirass or hauberk against sword or arrow, should ever have seriously entertained the idea of countenancing Christianity, is an unreasonable supposition. On the other hand, conciliation and tolerance were essential factors in
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