| Note | Appendix to Vagnone's Tuiyan zhengdao lun 推驗正道論, attr. Vagnone. See:
Ad Dudink & Nicolas Standaert, Chinese Christian Texts Database (CCT-Database)
JapSin I, 111a
Xingling shuo 性靈說.
By an anonymous author.
One juan. Chinese bamboo paper in one volume. No date or place of publication. This booklet (five folios) is found after the Tuiyan zhengdao lun. It does not give the name of its author. Hsü Tsung-tse (1949, p. 207) attributes it to Lodovico Buglio. Courant (6915 I) translates the title as “Traité de l’âme” and has Buglio as its author. Pfister makes no mention of this treatise in Buglio’s biography. The format is the same as that of the Tuiyan zhengdao lun (Jap-Sin I, 111). It begins by saying: I have discussed in great details the origin of man and the means that will help him to attain his end. But, unless one knows what is the soul, one’s knowledge (of God) is still incomplete. In the first paragraph of the Tuiyan zhengdao lun we read:When God created man he gave him a conscience . . . . What he should know is his origin and what he should do is to attain his end. If he can do this, he is said to have done his duty. There is a link between these two little treatises which lead us [to] think that they are by one and the same author, Alfonso Vagnone. Furthermore, both treatises stress that God is the author of creation and both refute the teaching of Buddha. Perhaps this is why the author’s name is not given.
Source: Albert Chan, S.J., Chinese Books and Documents in the Jesuit Archives in Rome, pp. 160-161. |
