The suspicions of Hideyoshi were further confirmed by a Spanish
sea-captain, who showed him a map of the world on which were marked the
vast dominions of the King of Spain; the Spaniard informing the
Japanese, in answer to his shrewd question, that these great conquests
had been made by the king's soldiers following up the priests, the work
being finished by the native and foreign allies.
The Political Character of Roman Christianity.
The Roman Catholic "Histoire del' Eglise Chretienne" shows the political
character of the missionary movement in Japan, a character almost
inextricably associated with the papal and other political Christianity
of the times, when State and Church were united in all the countries of
Europe, both Catholic and Protestant. Even republican Holland, leader of
toleration and forerunner of the modern Christian spirit, permitted,
indeed, the Roman Catholics to worship in private houses or in sacred
edifices not outwardly resembling churches, but prohibited all public
processions and ceremonies, because religion and politics at that time
were as Siamese twins. Only the Anabaptists held the primitive Christian
and the American doctrine of the separation of politics from
ecclesiasticism.
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