This naive explanation did not commend itself to his superiors in
the Roman Church. In the days of St. Augustine or of St. Thomas
Aquinas it would doubtless have been received much more kindly; but
in the days of Cardinal Antonelli this was hardly to be expected:
the Roman authorities, seeing the danger of such plain revelations
in the nineteenth century, even when coupled with such devout
explanations, put the book under the ban, though not before it had
been spread throughout the world in various translations. Father
Huc was sent on no more missions.
Yet there came even more significant discoveries, especially
bearing upon the claims of that great branch of the Church which
supposes itself to possess a divine safeguard against error in
belief. For now was brought to light by literary research the
irrefragable evidence that the great Buddha--Sakya Muni
himself--had been canonized and enrolled among the Christian saints
whose intercession may be invoked, and in whose honour images,
altars, and chapels may be erected; and this, not only by the usage
of the medieval Church, Greek and Roman, but by the special and
infallible sanction of a long series of popes, from the end of the
sixteenth century to the end of the nineteenth--a sanction granted
under one of the most curious errors in human history.
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