Friar Chuckles (“Frère Rigolet,” which evokes rigoler—to laugh or jest) may well be Voltaire's most burlesque creation, but this story is based in fact. This piece first appeared under the second title (“Relation du bannissement des Jésuites de la China, par l'auteur du Compère Mathieu”) in 1768, humorously adopting the name of another underground work, Le Compère Mathieu, which had been wrongly attributed to Voltaire. The title was changed to L'Empereur de la Chine et le frère Rigolet in 1775. The facts behind this send-up are related in the first few paragraphs below. The Jesuit, Dominican, and other missionaries sent to China soon began battling among themselves. In 1705, Pope Clement XI sent a Legate with a decree telling the Kangxi Emperor what converts were allowed to believe. In 1721, the emperor banned Christian missions altogether. His degree states that they were a small bigoted sect, impossible to reason with, and that their remarks were often incredible and ridiculous.

China, once entirely unknown, then long disfigured to our eyes, and now better known to us than several provinces in Europe, is the most populated, most flourishing, and most ancient empire in the world. We know from the last headcount taken under Emperor K'ang-hsi,1 in only the fifteen provinces themselves, that there were sixty million men capable of going to war, without counting either veterans over the age of sixty, nor young men under twenty, nor the mandarins, nor the lettered men, and, even less, the women. Going by this count, it seems unlikely that there could be less than a hundred and fifty million souls, or what we call souls, in China.

The ordinary revenues of the emperor are two hundred million ounces of fine silver, which amounts to twelve hundred and fifty million in French money, or a hundred and twenty-five million in gold ducats.

The armed forces of the state, we are told, consist of a militia of about 800,000 soldiers. The emperor has 570,000 horses available for either riding to war, court voyages, or for the public messengers.

We are further assured that this vast stretch of land is not governed despotically, but by six principle tribunals that serve as a curb to all the lower courts.

Religion there is simple, and this is an incontestable proof of its antiquity. The emperors of China have been the supreme pontiffs of the empire for over four thousand years. They adore a single God and offer him the first fruits of a field that they have cultivated with their own hands. Emperor K'ang-hsi wrote these very words, and had them engraved on the frontispiece of his temple: “Chang-ti (or Tiānzhǔ, “Lord of Heaven”) is without beginning and without end. He has made everything. He governs everything. He is boundlessly good and boundlessly just.”

Yong-ching, son and successor of K'ang-hsi, had an edict published throughout the empire that begins with these words: “There is between the Tiān (Heaven) and man a certain, infallible correspondence as to rewards and punishments.”

This religion of the emperor, the colaos, and all the learned people, is all the more beautiful in that it isn't sullied by any superstitions.

All the wisdom of the government was not able to prevent bonzes from entering the empire, any more than all the diligence of a head butler can keep rats from slipping into the cellars and the attics.

The spirit of tolerance, which made up the character of all the Asiatic nations, let the bonzes beguile the populace; but though they captivated the rabble, they were prevented from governing. They were treated like charlatans are treated: they are allowed to retail their quackeries in public squares, but if they rabble-rouse, they are hanged. So the bonzes were both tolerated and repressed.

Emperor K'ang-hsi had welcomed with singular bounty the Jesuit bonzes, and they, with the help of armillary spheres, barometers, thermometers, and field glasses they had brought from Europe, obtained public tolerance for the Christian religion from K'ang-hsi.

It should be observed that this emperor was obliged to consult the tribunals, to solicit them himself and to draw up the petition of the Jesuit bonzes in his own hand to obtain permission for them to exercise their religion, which clearly proves that the emperor is by no means despotic as so many poorly informed authors have claimed, and that the laws had more clout than he did.

The quarrels stirred up between the missionaries soon made this new sect odious. The Chinese, who are sensible people, were astonished and indignant to find these European bonzes daring to institute opinions with which they themselves did not agree. The tribunals presented reports on all these Europeans bonzes to the emperor, and especially on the Jesuits, much as we have since seen the Parlements of France draw up requisitions against this society and finally order its abolition.

This court case had not yet been judged when Emperor K'ang-hsi died on December 20, 1722. One of his sons, Yinzhen, the Yongzheng Emperor, succeeded him, one of the best princes God has ever given men. He had all the goodness of his father with a firmer, sounder spirit. As soon as he was on the throne, he received requisitions against the Jesuits from all the towns in the empire. He was warned that these bonzes, under the pretext of religion, were conducting an immense commerce, that they were preaching an intolerant doctrine, that they had been the sole cause of a civil war in Japan in which four hundred thousand souls had perished, that they were the soldiers and the spies of a priest from the Occident, they call the sovereign of all the kingdoms of the earth, that this priest had divided the kingdom of China into dioceses, that he had delivered a sentence against the ancient rites of the nation in Rome, and that, ultimately, if these unprecedented enterprises were not suppressed at the earliest opportunity, a revolution was to be feared.

Before deciding, the Yongzheng Emperor wanted to investigate the strange religion of these bonzes himself. He knew that one of them, Friar Chuckles, had converted a few children of the picklocks and washerwomen of the palace. He gave orders for him to be brought before him.

This Friar Chuckles was not a man of the court like Brothers Parennin and Verbiest.2 He had all the simplicity and enthusiasm of a devotee. There are people like that in every religious society; they are necessary to their order. One day, Oliva,³ the Superior General of the Jesuits, was asked to explain how there could be so many nincompoops in a society that passed for being so learned. He replied, “We must have saints.” And so it was that Friar Chuckles appeared before the emperor of China.

He was in his glory and had no doubt that he would have the honor of baptizing the emperor within two days at most. After he had performed the usual genuflections and struck his forehead on the ground nine times, the emperor had tea and biscuits brought to him and said, “Brother Chuckles, tell me, in all conscience, what this religion is that you are preaching to the washerwomen and picklocks of my palace?”

Friar Chuckles—August ruler of the fifteen ancient provinces of China and of the forty-two provinces of Tartary, my religion is the only true one, as my provost, Brother Bouvet told me, who got it from his nursemaid. The Chinese, the Japanese, the Koreans, the Tartars, the Indians, the Persians, the Turks, the Arabs, the Africans, and the Americans will all be damned. One can only please God in a part of Europe, and my sect is called the Catholic religion, which means universal.

The Emperor—Very good, Brother Chuckles. Your sect is limited to a small part of Europe, and you call it universal! Apparently you hope to extend it throughout the world?

Friar Chuckles—Sire, Your Majesty has hit the nail on the head. That's what we mean. As soon as we are sent into a country by the Reverend Brother General in the name of the pope, who is Vice-God on earth, we catechize minds that are not yet perverted by the dangerous habit of thinking. The children of the lowest classes being the most worthy of our doctrine, we begin with them. Then we go to the women and soon they send their husbands. And as soon as we have a sufficient number of proselytes, we become powerful enough to force the sovereign to win eternal life by becoming subject to the pope.

The Emperor—One couldn't do better, Brother Chuckles. Sovereigns are much obliged to you. Show me on this geographical map where your pope lives.

Friar Chuckles—Sacred Imperial Majesty, he lives at the end of the world on this little angle you see here, and it is from there that he damns or saves all the kings of the earth, according to his will. He is the Vice-God, the Vice-Chang-ti, the Vice-Tian. He must govern the entire earth in the name of God, and our Brother General must govern under him.

The Emperor—My compliments to the Vice-God and to the Brother General. But your God, who is he? Tell me a little something about him.

Friar Chuckles—Our God was born in a stable, seventeen hundred and twenty-three years ago, between an ox and a donkey, and three kings, apparently from your country, were guided by a new star to come to adore him in a manger.

The Emperor—Indeed, Brother Chuckles, if I had been there, I would not have failed to form a fourth.

Friar Chuckles—I believe you, Sire, but if you have the curiosity to take a little journey, you would be free to see his mother. She lives here in this little spot you see on the coast of the Adriatic Sea, in the same house where she gave birth to God. This house, to tell the truth, wasn't originally in this spot. This is where it was in a little Jewish village, on the map. But after thirteen hundred years, celestial spirits transported it to where you see. The mother of God isn't really there in flesh and blood, but in wood. It is a statue that some of our brothers think was made by God, her son; who was a very good carpenter.

The Emperor—A carpenter God! A God born of a woman! Everything you tell me is admirable.

Friar Chuckles—Oh, Sire! She was not a woman, she was a virgin maiden. It's true that she was married, and that she had two other children named James, as the old Gospels say. But she was no less of a virgin for it.

The Emperor—What! She was a virgin, and she had children!

Friar Chuckles—Really, truly. That's the best part of the story. It was God who got this girl with child.

The Emperor—I don't understand you at all. You said earlier she was the mother of God. So God slept with his mother to be born of her afterwards?

Friar Chuckles—You've got it, Sacred Majesty! Grace is operating already. That's it, I tell you. God changed into a pigeon to make a child with the wife of a carpenter, and this child was God himself.

The Emperor—But then there are two gods altogether, a carpenter and a pigeon?

Friar Chuckles—Undoubtedly, Sire. But there is also a third one, who is the father of those two and who we always paint with a majestic beard. It is that god who ordered the pigeon to make a child with the carpentress, from which was born the carpenter god. But in fact, these three gods make only one. The father engendered the son before he came into the world, the son was then engendered by the pigeon, and the pigeon proceeded from the father and the son. However, you can see that the pigeon who proceeded, the carpenter born of the pigeon, and the father who engendered the son of the pigeon can only be one sole God, and that any man who does not believe this story must be burned in this world and the next.

The Emperor—That is as clear as day. A god born in a stable, seventeen hundred and twenty-three years ago, between an ox and a donkey; another god in a dovecote; a third god from whom the other two came and who isn't older than them, despite his white beard; a virgin mother. Nothing is simpler and wiser. Uh, tell me, Friar Chuckles, if your god was born, then I suppose he died?

Friar Chuckles—If he died, Sacred Majesty! You can take my word for it, and to gratify us. He disguised his divinity so well that he let himself be whipped and hanged, despite his miracles. But he also resurrected two days later without anyone seeing him and went back to heaven, after solemnly promising that “he would soon come back on a cloud, with great glory and majesty,” as Luke said in his twenty-first chapter, the most learned historian who ever was. The trouble is that he didn't come back.

The Emperor—Come here, Brother Chuckles, let me embrace you. Go, you will never cause a revolution in my empire. Your religion is charming. You will make all my subjects bust a gut. But you must tell me everything. Here is your god, born, spanked, hanged, and buried. Before him, had you no other?

Friar Chuckles—Yes, indeed, there was another in the same small country, just simply called the Lord. That one did not let himself get hanged like the other. He was a God you didn't mess around with. He took it into his head to take a horde of robbers and murderers under his protection in favor of which he slaughtered all the animals and all the eldest sons of Egypt one fine morning. After which, he expressly ordered his dear people to steal everything they could and to flee without fighting, given that he was the God of armies. Then he opened up the sea, suspending the waters on the right and left to let them pass on dry land, for lack of boats. Then he conducted them all into a desert where they all died; but he took great care of the second generation. It is for them that he made the walls of towns fall to the sound of a cornetto, and through the ministry of a lady tavern keeper. It was for his dear Jews that he stopped the sun and moon at high noon, to give them time to slaughter their enemies more at their ease. He loved this dear people so much that he made them slaves of the other peoples, which they still are today. But you see, all that was only a model, a shade, an image, a prophecy, that heralded the adventures of our Lord Jesus, Jewish God, son of God the Father, son of Mary, son of God the pigeon who proceeded from him, and who also had a putative father.

Admire, Sacred Majesty, the profundity of our divine religion. Our hanged God, being Jewish, was predicted by all the Jewish prophets.

Your Sacred Majesty should know that among this divine people there were divine men who knew the future better than you know what is happening in Peking. Those people only had to play the harp and, straight away, all future events presented themselves before their eyes. A prophet named Isaiah slept with a woman by order of the Lord. He had a son, and this son was our Lord Jesus Christ because his name was Maher-Shalal-Hash-Baz, quickly share the spoils.4 Another prophet, named Ezekiel, slept on his left side three hundred and eighty-four days, and forty on his right side, which meant Jesus Christ. If Your Sacred Majesty permits me to say it, this Ezekiel ate excrement on his bread, as he says in his fourth chapter. And that meant Jesus Christ.

Another prophet, named Hosea, slept with a prostitute named Gomer, daughter of Diblaim, by God's command. And that meant, not only Jesus Christ but his two older brothers, James the Greater and James the Lesser, according to the interpretation of the most learned Fathers of our Holy Church.

Another prophet, named Jonah, was swallowed by a sea dog and lived three days and three nights in its belly. This is visibly Jesus Christ again, who was buried three days and three nights, in subtracting one night and two days to make the count fall right. The two sisters, Oholah and Oholibah, spread their thighs to every comer, have a bordel built and give the preference to those who have genitals like donkeys or horses, according to the very words used in Holy Scripture,5 and that means the Church of Christ.

And that is how everything was predicted in the Jewish books. Your Sacred Majesty was predicted. Even I was predicted, for it is written, “I shall call them to the extremities of the Orient,” and it is Friar Chuckles who comes to call you to give yourself to Jesus Christ, my Savior.

The Emperor—In what days were these fine predictions written?

Friar Chuckles—I don't know that precisely, but I do know that the prophecies proved the miracles of Jesus Christ, my Savior, and the miracles of Jesus Christ prove the prophecies in turn. No one's ever been able to answer that argument, and it will no doubt establish our sect all over the world, if we have a lot of believers, soldiers, and ready money.

The Emperor—I believe it, and I have already been forewarned. One goes far with money and prophecies. But you haven't yet told me about the miracles of your God. You only told me that he was spanked and hanged.

Friar Chuckles—Ah, Sire, is that not already a very great miracle? But there were many others. Firstly, the devil carried him off to the top of a mountain, from which you could see all the kingdoms of the world, and said to him, “I will give you all these kingdoms if you worship me.” But God mocked the devil. Later, our Lord Jesus was invited to a village wedding and the boys being drunk but out of wine, our Lord Jesus changed the water to wine on the spot, after insulting his mother.⁶ Some time later, finding himself near Gadara, or Gesara, along the little Lake of Gennesaret, he encountered demons in the bodies of two persons possessed. He chased them out without delay and sent them into a herd of two thousand pigs that went off grunting and threw themselves into the lake where they drowned.⁷ And what proves even more the greatness of this miracle is that there were no pigs in that country.

The Emperor—I am annoyed, Brother Chuckles, that your god played a trick like that. The owner of the pigs must not have been very pleased. Have you any idea how much two thousand fat pigs are worth in money? I see a man ruined, with no means of support. I am no longer surprised they hanged your god. The pig owner must have presented a petition against him, and I can assure you that, in my country, a god like that, performing a miracle like that, would not carry things any further. You give me a great urge to read the books the Lord Jesus wrote to see how he justified such a strange sort of miracle.

Friar Chuckles—Sacred majesty, he never wrote any books. He didn't know how to read or write.

The Emperor—Ah! Ah! Here is something worth all the rest. A lawmaker who has never written any law!

Friar Chuckles—Fie, heavens, Sire! When a god comes to get himself hanged, he doesn't bother with such bagatelles! He has his secretaries write them. Some forty of them took the trouble to write down all these truths, a hundred years later. It's true that they all contradict each other, but it is in that very fact that the truth consists, and from these forty stories, we chose four in the end, which are precisely those that contradict themselves the most, so that the truth will show more clearly.

All his disciples performed even more miracles than he did, and we perform still more every day. We have among us the god St. Francis Xavier, who resuscitated nine dead people altogether in India. Truth be told, no one saw the resurrections, but we celebrated them from one end of the earth to the other, and were believed. Believe me, Sire, become a Jesuit, and I guarantee that we will publish a list of your miracles before two years are out. We will make you a saint, celebrate your Feast Day in Rome and call you Saint Yongzheng after your death.

The Emperor—I'm in no hurry, Brother Chuckles. That may come in time. All I ask is not to be hanged like your god was, because it seems a rather high price to pay for divinity.

Brother Chuckles—Ah, Sire! That's because you have no faith yet. But once you've been baptized, you will be enchanted to be hanged for the love of our Savior, Jesus Christ. What pleasure you will have to see him at Mass, to speak to him, and eat him!

The Emperor—What? Death of me! You people eat your god?

Friar Chuckles—Yes, Sire, I make him and I eat him. I prepared four dozen this morning, and I will you get some later, if Your Sacred Majesty commands.

The Emperor—You will give me great pleasure, my friend. Go quickly, fetch your gods.

I will order my cooks to stand ready meanwhile, to cook them. You will tell them what sauce to add. I imagine that a dish of gods must be excellent, and that I will have never eaten better.

Friar Chuckles—Sacred Majesty, I obey your supreme orders, and I'll be back in a moment. God be praised! Here is an emperor I will make a Christian of, upon my word!

While Friar Chuckles went to get his lunch, the Emperor remained with his Secretary of State, Ouang-Tse. They were both in the grip of the greatest astonishment and the keenest indignation.

“The other Jesuits,” said the Emperor, “like Parennin, Verbiest, Péreira, Bouvet, and the others, never admitted a single one of these abominable extravagances to me. I see all too clearly that these missionaries are scoundrels that have imbeciles for followers. The scoundrels succeeded with my father by performing experiments in physics that amused him, and the imbeciles succeeded with the populace. They are convinced, and they convince others. That can become highly pernicious. I see that the tribunals had every reason to present petitions against these disturbers of the public peace. Tell me, I implore you, you who have studied the history of Europe, how it is that a religion so absurd, so blasphemous, was adopted by so many small nations?

The Secretary of State—Alas, Sire! Just like the sect of the god Fo was spread throughout your empire, by charlatans who won over the common people. Your Majesty would not believe what a prodigious effect the charlatans of Europe have had in their land. The scallywag who just spoke to you admitted himself that his accomplices, after having taught dogmas to the rabble made for them, then make it rise against the government. They destroyed a great empire called the Roman Empire, which was spread across Europe and Asia, and blood was spilled for over fourteen centuries by the divisions among these sycophants who wanted to make themselves the masters of men's minds. First they made the princes believe they could not rule without the priests, and soon they rose up against the princes. I read that they dethroned an emperor named Debonaire, a Henri IV, a Frederick,8 and over thirty kings, and that they assassinated more than twenty.

If the wisdom of the Chinese government has restrained the bonzes who dishonor your provinces until now, it can never avert the ills that the bonzes of Europe will cause. Those people have a spirit a hundred times more fervent, a zeal more violent, and a fury more reasoned in their dementia than the fanaticism of all the bonzes of Japan, Siam, and all those who are tolerated in China.

The idiots among them preach, and the scoundrels intrigue. They subjugate men through the women, and women through the confessional. Masters of all the family secrets, which they relate to their superiors, they are soon the masters of the state without yet even appearing to be so, that much surer of achieving their designs for not seeming to have any. They reach power through humility, wealth through poverty, and cruelty through mildness.

Do you remember, Sire, the fable of the dragons who turned themselves into sheep, in order to devour men more easily? That is their character. There have never been monsters more dangerous on earth, and God has never had enemies more sinister.

The Emperor—Hush. Here comes Friar Chuckles with his lunch. A little fun is in order.

Friar Chuckles arrived indeed holding a great tin box that resembled a tobacco tin in his hand. “Let us see your god who is in the box,” the Emperor said. Friar Chuckles at once took out a dozen little pieces of wafer, round and flat as paper. “My word,” said the Emperor, “my friend, if we have only that for our lunch, we're going to have a meager meal. A god, to my mind, should be somewhat plumper. What do you expect me to do with these pieces of paste?” “Sire,” said Friar Chuckles, “may your Majesty just have a pint of red wine brought, and the rest will be easy.”

The Emperor asked him why he wanted red instead of white wine, which was better at lunch. Chuckles replied that he was going to change the wine into blood, and that it was easier to make blood with red wine than with pale wine. His Majesty found the reason excellent and ordered that a bottle of red wine be brought. In the meanwhile, he amused himself with gazing at the gods that Friar Chuckles had brought in the pocket of his drawers. He was very surprised to see that the little pieces of paste were stamped with a gibbet and a poor devil attached to it. “Uh, Sire,” Friar Chuckles said, “don't you remember that I told you that our god was hanged? We always engrave his gallows on these little wafers that we change into gods. We put those gallows everywhere in our temples, our houses, our crossroads, along our main roads, and we sing, “Good day, our only hope.” We swallow God with his gallows. “That's all very well,” the Emperor said, “All that I wish you, is not to end as he did.”

Meanwhile, the bottle of red wine was brought. Friar Chuckles set it on a table beside his tin box and took a greasy book out of his pocket. He put it in his right hand, then, turning to the Emperor, said, “Sire, I have the honor of being gatekeeper, reader, conjurer, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and priest. Our Holy Father, the pope, the Great Innocent III, decided in his first book, Mysteries of the Mass, that our god had been a gatekeeper when he chased good merchants out of the temple with whips, who had permission to sell turtledoves to those who came to sacrifice. He was a reader when, according to Luke, he took the book of the synagogue, even though he didn't know how to read or write. He was a conjurer when he drove all the devils into the pigs. He was an acolyte because the Jewish prophet Jeremiah said, “I am the light of the world,” and because acolytes carry candles. He was a subdeacon when he changed the water into wine because the subdeacons serve at table. He was a deacon when he fed four thousand men, not counting the women and small children, with seven small loaves of bread and a few small fish in the land of Magadan, known the world over according to St. Matthew, or else when he fed five thousand men with five loaves and two small fish near Bethsaida, as St. Luke said.9 Finally, he was a priest in the order of Melchizedek¹⁰ when he said to his disciples that he was going to give them his body to eat. Being therefore a priest like him, I'm going to change this bread into gods. Every crumb of this bread will be a god in body and spirit. You will think you are seeing bread, eating bread, and you will be eating God.

“Then although the blood of this god will be in the body I have created with some words, I will change your red wine into the blood of this same god. For a plenitude of right, I will drink it. It is entirely up to Your Majesty to do as much. I have only to throw water on your face to make you gatekeeper, reader, conjurer, acolyte, subdeacon, deacon and priest. You will have a divine meal with me.”

Friar Chuckles promptly pronounced some words in Latin, swallowed two dozen hosts, drank a pint, and said grace very devoutly.

“But my dear friend,” said the Emperor, “you have eaten and drunk your god. What will become of him when you need a chamber pot?” “Sire,” said Friar Chuckles, “he will become whatever he can. That is his affair. Some of our doctors of theology say we deliver him in our water-closets; others, that he escapes through our perspiration. Some claim he returns to heaven. As for myself, I have done my duty as a priest, and that is enough for me. And if I am given a good dinner after this lunch with a little money for my trouble, I am happy.”

“That isn't all, however,” said the Emperor to Friar Chuckles, “I know there are other missionaries in my empire that are not Jesuits, that are called Dominicans, Franciscans, and Capuchins. Tell me in conscience whether they eat God like you?”

“They eat him, Sire,” said the good man, “but it only leads to their damnation. They are all scoundrels, and our greatest enemies. They want to pull the rug out from under our feet. They are constantly denouncing us to our Holy Father, the pope. Your Majesty would do very well to chase them all out and only keep the Jesuits. That would be one real way of earning eternal life, even if you don't become Christian.”

The Emperor swore he would not fail to do so. He gave a few silver coins to Friar Chuckles, who immediately ran off to announce the good news to all his confreres.

The next day, the Emperor kept his word. He had all the missionaries assembled, whether those that are called seculars, or those that are very irregularly called regulars, or propaganda priests, or apostolic vicars, bishops in partibus,11 foreign mission priests, Capuchins, Franciscans, Dominicans, Hieronymites,¹² and Jesuits. He spoke to them in these terms, in the presence of three hundred colaos:

Tolerance has always seemed to me to be the primary bond between men, and the primary duty of sovereigns. If there were any religions in the world that could arrogate the title of being the only right one, it is most certainly ours. You all admit that we were paying homage to a Supreme Being in a pure unadulterated religion before any of the countries you come from were known even to its neighbors, before a single one of your occidental countries had even acquired the use of the written word. You did not exist when we already had a powerful empire. Our ancient religion, unalterable in our tribunals but having been corrupted among the people, we tolerated the bonzes of Fo, the talapoins of Siam, the lamas of Tartary, the secretaries of Laokium, and, regarding all men as our brothers, we have never punished any of them for straying. Error is not a crime. God is not offended at being worshipped in a ridiculous manner. A father does not cast out one of his children for bowing or curtsying incorrectly in greeting him. He is satisfied, so long as he is loved and respected. The tribunals of my empire do not reproach you with your absurdities. They pity your infatuation with the most detestable collection of fables that human folly has ever accumulated. They bemoan even more the poor use you make of what little reason remains to you to justify these fables.

But what they do not forgive you is to have come from the ends of the earth to destroy our peace. You are the blind instruments of a little Italian lama who, after having deposed a few of his neighboring kinglings, wishes to absorb vaster empires in our Oriental regions.

We are all too familiar with the horrible mayhem you caused in Japan. Twelve religions flourished there with commerce, under the auspices of a wise and moderate government. A fraternal harmony reigned between these twelve religions. You appeared, and conflict overwhelmed Japan. Blood ran on all sides. You did the same in Siam and in Manila. I must preserve my empire from such a dangerous plague. I am tolerant, and I expulse you all because you are intolerant. I chase you out because, divided among yourselves and detesting each other, you are prepared to infect my people with the poison that devours you. I will not cast you into dungeons, where you make all those not of your opinion waste away in Europe. I am even further from condemning you to torture, as you do all those you call heretics in Europe. We do not uphold our religion with executioners here. We do not use such arguments in our disputes. Leave. Take your atrocious follies elsewhere, and may you learn wisdom! The wagons that will conduct you to Macao are ready. I give you clothing and money. Soldiers will see to your security en route. I do not want the people to insult you. Go and be witnesses to my justice and clemency in Europe.

They left. Christianity was abolished in China, as it was in Persia, Tartary, Japan, India, Turkey, and all Africa. It's a great shame, but that's what happens when you're infallible.