After listening to Chongzhen's views on religion, Liu Jingting realized why the emperor sent his ministers away, and warned him to forget this conversation when he went out.

An emperor who regards religion as a false worldview is undoubtedly tantamount to questioning the existence of the Mandate of Heaven. Although Chongzhen talked about it in the army before, the imperial power is ordered by the sky, in fact, it is ordered by the people.

This view is in line with Mencius's idea that the people are precious, and it is more realistic and reasonable to use the mandate of heaven to restrict imperial power than to use public opinion to restrain imperial power, so this view was quickly accepted by Shilin.

Although the clans in various places were very disgusted by Chongzhen's statement, because equating the heavens with the people would undoubtedly limit their power to do whatever they wanted in the fiefdom, and also deny the particularity of the royal bloodline.

But today, although the clan enjoys some privileges, it has little voice in politics. In addition, the most noble and noble king of the vassal kings, Fu Wang, is also deeply disgusted by the Mandate of Heaven. According to this theory, if he could not inherit the throne, it was equivalent to the fact that the Mandate of Heaven did not favor him, so he should honestly be a vassal king who submitted to the emperor.

However, even if most people vaguely link the Mandate of Heaven with public opinion, it does not mean that everyone is willing to accept an emperor who completely denies the existence of the Mandate of Heaven. Because this is not only an important means of checking and balancing the imperial power, but most importantly, it has shaken the ruling power of the imperial court.

The Ming Emperor was ordered by Heaven to rule over the people, and the officials of the Quartet were ordered by the monarch to rule over the subjects of various places, and the people rebelled against the officials to rebel against the emperor, and if they rebelled against the emperor, they violated the mandate of heaven.

Therefore, every time the dynasty ends, some careerists will jump out and claim that the son has lost the favor of the mandate of heaven today, so he is no longer worthy to continue to rule the people. Now that Chongzhen has openly denied the existence of the Mandate of Heaven, isn't it tantamount to denying his own monarchy and the management power of the court officials and local gentry over the people?

Perhaps Chongzhen could not mind that his monarchy would be questioned, but the bureaucratic gentry would certainly not want to deny their power that had existed since ancient times.

Although Liu Jingting remained calm on the surface, his heart was like boiling water, and he didn't know how to respond, and the emperor fundamentally rejected the religious view. If the Emperor had appointed him to this official position for the purpose of eliminating all religions, then he estimated that this policy would surely lead to great chaos in the world.

Even Sage Kong only said: Worship ghosts and gods and stay away, and the son is silent and strange. How could he dare to go along with the emperor's views when a saint couldn't do it. Just when he was in a dilemma and remained silent, Chongzhen changed the topic and did not completely eliminate religion as he guessed, which couldn't help but make him greatly relieved.

Although religion is a false worldview, and it will eventually die out in the future, the time of this demise is determined by the degree of development of world civilization, not by the will of any one person. Therefore, although I do not believe in religion, I also admit that religious belief exists objectively.

And as far as some religions are concerned, some of the things they advocate are still in line with the values of social civilization, such as loving family, being kind to strangers, helping and showing mercy to those who are suffering, and so on.

Of course, there are many more people who go around propagating superstitious ideas in the name of religion, blinding the ignorant people at the bottom and amassing money for their own pleasure.

The work of the Committee on Religious Affairs is to make a thorough distinction between religious ideas and religious superstitions, and to rescue the people who have been blinded by superstitious ideas.

Of course, relying on the imperial court to do this kind of thing alone is obviously not enough. So in some ways, we still need to rely on the righteous religious believers to publicize and expose these superstitious behaviors, so that the deceived people can wake up.

In the past, I set up monks and Taoists to manage the monks and Taoists in the world, but what is the religion of my Ming Dynasty that is not just Buddha and Tao? And now the Buddha and the Tao may not all be good men and women, isn't the White Lotus Sect from the Pure Land Sect?

It can be seen that in order to get rid of religious superstition, we must first regulate the missionary behavior of religion. Therefore, the first court recognized freedom of religious belief, but this freedom of belief did not only mean that the people had the freedom to believe in any religion; It also lies in the freedom that the people have when to believe and when they do not want to believe.

However, anyone who regards believers who have joined the religion as their private property, cannot withdraw from them, and takes revenge on the people who want to quit the religion, this is bound to be a cult. The first thing the committee will crack down on is to resolutely ban this kind of cult and to publicize it widely so that it will not spread in various places.

Second, all religions propagated in Daming must have their own doctrines and canons, and must use Chinese texts for preaching, and all of the above must be examined by the committee, and the doctrines and canons that do not meet the requirements of the imperial court will be eliminated, and those who do not want to abide by them will not be allowed to preach in Daming.

The third is that no religion must propagate allegiance to a certain person or a certain family, on the contrary, all religions must propagate allegiance to their own followers, and a righteous believer must first be a patriot. Religions that owe allegiance to individuals, families, and even foreigners are likewise forbidden to proselytize in China..."

With Chongzhen's words, Liu Jingting finally settled down, if the emperor only asked for these things, although these affairs were troublesome and complicated, it was not enough for him to not even have the courage to try.

After Chongzhen finished talking about the idea of religious management, he continued: "In addition to banning these cults, the committee should pay special attention to those religions that are entangled with ethnic minorities.

For example, Tantra practiced by the Mongolian and Tibetan ethnic minorities and Tianfang Religion practiced by the ethnic minorities in the Western Regions often have ethnic issues hidden behind these religions, so the committee should be cautious about treating them differently.

Some people believe in religion for spiritual sustenance, some people believe in religion to escape reality, and some people believe in religion solely to distinguish ethnic groups.

For the first type of person, the court should protect them; For the second type of people, the court wants to help them return to reality. But for the third kind of people, only blood and fire can purify their souls. What the committee has to do is to distinguish between these three types of people..."

When Liu Jingting stepped out of the Qianqing Palace, his spirit was still a little trance, and even the chamberlain who led the way for him reminded him that he had taken the wrong road, but he didn't react for a few breaths.

Before today, he originally thought that this Ethnic Minorities and Religious Affairs Committee was just a place to appease the leaders and leaders of the more powerful ethnic minorities. However, after listening to the emperor's words, he felt that he had a heavy responsibility on his shoulders. This made his mood suddenly solemn, but what he didn't realize was that there was a kind of excitement in his heart.

Although a quarter of the merchant representatives from all over the country had not yet arrived, the merchant delegates who could not wait any longer still held a meeting in a hurry. The main thing they want to discuss is to reflect on the policies that were formulated at the beginning of the year.

At the beginning of the year, the merchant representatives were only concerned with keeping the tax rates as low as possible, lest the imperial court take advantage of them. It was precisely because of their concerted efforts that in the end the emperor made a big concession. This is also the reason why this year's domestic tax revenue in addition to the raw silk industry, other industries have not improved much.

However, less than a year after the implementation of the unified tax system, many business representatives regretted it. Originally, the markets of the Ming provinces were like an independent kingdom, except for a small number of officials and merchants, most of the merchants were intercepted by the many customs in the region.

Under this forced market segregation, most businessmen, except for a few smugglers and government businessmen, were reluctant to do business in unfamiliar areas because the cost of developing new markets was too high.

The abolition of checkpoints and the introduction of a tax system have impacted the artificially created independent markets. In particular, the merchants from Jiangnan have always had more abundant capital than those from other regions. After the restrictions were lifted, merchants from around Taihu Lake quickly seized the highest-end market in the neighboring provinces.

In particular, Susong's cloth, although it suffered a setback in the northern market, was still much better than the local cloth in the two lakes and the southwestern provinces. In the past, because of the tax card, the cloth exported by Susong was mainly high-end products, so among the middle and lower class people in the provinces, the local native cloth or linen occupied the main market, after all, the southwest itself is the production area of flax.

However, this year's disaster in the north, coupled with the newly produced standard cloth in the capital, made Su Song's standard cloth sales in the north seriously frustrated, but the cotton yarn shipped from the north greatly reduced the manufacturing cost of Jiangnan cloth. Therefore, the coarse cloth produced in Jiangnan began to be brought by merchants to the southern provinces to try marketing.

The low freight costs along the Yangtze River make the coarse cloth produced in Jiangnan cheaper and of better quality than the locally produced homespun cloth. As a result, the cloth merchants around the Yangtze River who collected and sold the native cloth in the province bore the brunt.

Sichuan and Guizhou suffered a great blow to production because of the war, so most of the daily necessities such as cloth relied on the import of Huguang merchants. But now the cloth and daily necessities from the south of the Yangtze River have basically destroyed Huguang's products, and the market in Huguang province has also been squeezed out a lot.

This obviously made the merchants of Huguang very dissatisfied, and the construction of the Hankou tea market attracted a large number of tea merchants, which greatly affected the tea business in Anhui and Fujian, and the tea farmers and tea merchants in the two places were also dissatisfied.

Shanxi merchants disliked Shaanxi merchants for importing a large amount of leather from Outer Mongolia, which hit the price of leather this year and greatly reduced their profits on the grassland.

Merchants from Guangzhou, Fujian and Zhejiang were dissatisfied with the sharp drop in overseas silk prices and various goods after the lifting of the sea ban. Speaking of which, the only people who were satisfied with the various commercial policies at the beginning of the year were probably the businessmen of Beizhili, led by Beijing and Tianjin.