able to read their prayers, without understanding them. They are not allowed to attend the public examinations, as long as they continue priests; and thus every avenue to advancement is closed against them. Their numbers prevent them from making much profit by their profession; and most of them are obliged, whether they will or not, to carry out their vow of poverty. The degraded state of the Buddhist priesthood, and the dilapidated condition of their temples, would intimate the speedy downfall of the system, and should encourage Christians to undermine, what is already tottering to ruin.
We cannot conclude our account of the Buddhistic religion, without noticing the similarity of its ceremonies to those of the church of Rome. The points of coincidence are many and striking. The celibacy, tonsure, professed poverty, secluded abodes, and peculiar dress of the priests: the use of the rosary, candles, incense, holy water, bells, images, and relics, in their worship; their belief in purgatory, with the possibility of praying souls out of its fires; the offering up of prayers in a strange language, with their incessant repetition; the pretension to miracles; the similarity of their altar pieces; and the very titles of their intercessors, such as "goddess of mercy," "holy mother," "queen of heaven," with the image of a virgin, having a child in her arms, holding a cross, are all such striking coincidences, that the catholic missionaries were greatly stumbled at the resemblance between the Chinese worship and their own, when they came over to convert the natives to Christianity; and some of them thought, that the author of evil had induced these pagans to imitate the manners of holy
