The two remarks seem to me to be very different in meaning. In the latter case, Confucius was, in effect, saying, ‘What will be will be.’ In the former, however, he was saying that Heaven had endowed him with special virtue so that he could shoulder the t‘ien ming of awakening the Empire to its moral purpose and that if Huan T‘ui was allowed to kill him Heaven would be frustrating its own purpose.
