rs of the faith and religion. And I dare
affirm that Christians thus instructed will be Christians rather by
force than in their hearts.

In no part of the Yndias can one more intelligently expect that the
regulars will be strict of observance than in the Filipinas Islands;
for all their missions, even those in the suburbs of Manila, are
surrounded by heathen and Moros--Chinese, Japanese, Mindanaos,
Joloans, and Borneans, and people of almost all the other kingdoms
of the Orient whose conversion is so anxiously desired. For if those
heathen and Moro nations, who have before their eyes the conduct of
the Christians, come to observe it as not at all in accord with right,
not only among the secular clergy but among the regulars--who are by
their profession teachers of the law and are bound to furnish a good
example as the rule of their observance--what would they think, or
what notion would they form of it? It is learned from some mandarins
of Great China who were converted to our holy faith because they saw
in all the ministers of it for many years a conformity of morals that
was regulated to natural law, that they prudently conclude therefrom
that the law which taught such actions could not be other than
true. If the Chinese and Japanese who live in those islands should
see the evangelical ministers acting against all natural dictates,
they would come to a contrary conclusion, for they have no greater
arguments for belief than those which come through their eyes.

The regulars of the Filipinas Islands have well understood how just it
is that the right of his Majesty's royal patronage be observed therein
according to his orders. Therefore, they do not petition for exemption
from the choice by the governors and the collations by the ordinaries
under any other title than that of a favor from the greatness of his
Majesty, if perchance their merits have deserved it. For, as is well
known, there are no missions more distant throughout the monarchy
nor more seas to pass nor seas so endangered by the enemies of the
faith--which can be affirmed by those who administer outside the
suburbs of Manila and their environs, who continually bear death or
captivity before their eyes.

If his Majesty has been pleased to give privileges to the citizens of
those islands with the honorable title of hidalgos and nobles--the
munificence of his Majesty supplying what birth denied to many, a
privilege not conceded to any others of the Yndias--