476 Mr. STEWART’S Account of 
powerful body in the ftate, have the priefthood entirely 
in their hands ; and, befides, fill up many monaftic orders 
which are held in great veneration among them. Celi-r 
bacy, I believe, is not pofitively enjoined to the Lamas ; 
but it is held indifpenfable for both men and women, 
who embrace a religious life : and indeed their celibacy, 
their living in communities, their cloyfters, their fervice 
In the choirs, their firings of beads, their fafts, and their 
penances, give them fo much the air of Chriftian monks, 
that it is not furprizing an illiterate capuchin fhould be 
ready to hail them brothers, and think he can trace the 
features of St. Francis in every thing about them. It is 
an old notion, that the religion of Thibet is a corrupted 
Chriftianity; and even Father disederii, a Jefuit (but 
not of the Ghinefe million) who vifited the country 
about the beginning of this century, thinks he can re- 
folve all their myfteries into ours; and aflerts, with a 
true myftical penetration, that they have certainly a good 
notion of the Trinity, fince, in their addrefs to the Deity, 
they fay as often Konciok-oik in the plural as Konciok 
in the lingular, and with their rofaries pronounce thele 
words, Om, ha, hum. The truth is, that the religion of 
Thibet, from whence-ever it fprung, is pure and fimple 
in its fource, conveying very exalted notions of the Deity, 
with no contemptible fyftem of morality; but in its 
progrefs 
