弘明集 1.59

1.59

又誣云。有無靈下經無靈下經妖怪之書耳。非三墳五典訓誥之言也。通才達儒所未究覽也。三曾五祖之言。又似解奏之文。此殆不詰而虛妄自露矣。今具聊復應之。凡俗人常謂。人死則滅無靈無鬼。然則無靈則無天曹。無鬼則無所枚也。若子孫奉佛而乃追譴祖先。或是賢人君子平生之時未必與子孫同事。而天曹便收伐之。命顏冉之尸羅枉戮之痛。仁慈祖考加虐毒於貴體。此豈聰明正直之神乎。若其非也。則狐狢魍魎淫厲之鬼。何能反制仁賢之靈而困禁戒之人乎。以此為誣。鄙醜書矣。

The slanderer also falsely says: “There is an Underworld Scripture without Spirits.” This Underworld Scripture without Spirits is merely a book of anomalies; it is not the words of the Three Fen, the Five Dian, the admonitions, or the announcements, nor something that comprehensive talents and accomplished scholars have ever examined. Its talk of the three great-grandfathers and five ancestors also resembles the texts of memorialized prayers. This exposes its own emptiness and falsehood almost without need for interrogation. Now I shall briefly respond to it nevertheless. Worldly people often say that when a person dies they are extinguished, having no spirits and no ghosts. But if there are no spirits, there is no heavenly tribunal; if there are no ghosts, there is nothing to count. If descendants honor the Buddha and punishment is thereby brought upon ancestors—even if they were worthies and gentlemen who during their lives did not necessarily engage in the same practices as their descendants—and the heavenly tribunal immediately seizes and strikes them, decreeing that the corpses of Yan and Ran suffer the pain of wrongful execution, and causing benevolent ancestors to inflict cruel torment upon noble bodies: could these be intelligent, upright spirits? If they are not, then how could ghosts of foxes, badgers, mountain goblins, and licentious pestilences in turn subjugate the spirits of the benevolent and worthy, and trouble those who observe the prohibitory precepts? To take this as slander makes it a base and ugly book indeed.