Note (return) — Chapter XI · - A CENTURY OF ROMAN CHRISTIANITY

All efforts were now put forth to uproot not only Christianity but also everything of foreign planting. The Portuguese were banished and the death penalty declared against all who should return, The ai no ko, or half-breed children, were collected and shipped by hundreds to Macao. All persons adopting or harboring Eurasians were to be banished, and their relatives punished. The Christian cause now became like the doomed city of Babylon or like the site of Nineveh, which, buried in the sand and covered with the desolation and silence of centuries, became lost to the memory of the world, so that even the very record of scripture was the jest of the infidel, until the spade of Layard brought them again to resurrection. So, Japanese Christianity, having vanished in blood, was supposed to have no existence, thus furnishing Mr. Lecky with arguments to prove the extirpative power of persecution.23