great affection and fraternal feeling
which they profess toward Ours; for all of them on that day, leaving
their own church (which also is named Santissimo Nombre de Jesus,
out of respect for the holy Child, which is deposited therein), came
with their singers to our church, where they celebrated on the day
before most solemn vespers, and on the day of the feast officiated
and sang solemn high mass and preached a sermon--all of which I could
not attend, on account of being, as I have said, ill. To grant me a
further favor and charity, they chose to be my guests and partake of
our poverty. It pleased God, in His mercy, to give me health, so that
I might acquit myself in part of this obligation and the many others
which we owe to them. Thirteen days later, which was the day on which
they celebrate their feast of the most holy name of Jesus, I visited
them and preached for them, and ate with them. Some days afterward,
there arrived from Manila two discalced religious of the holy Order
of St. Francis, who had come to embark in a vessel which was fitting
out in that port for Nueva Espana. They disembarked near our house,
which stands at the edge of the water; and, in acknowledgment of the
debt that we also owe to that holy order and its blessed fathers--who,
in so great self-abnegation and aversion to worldly things, in all seek
only the things of Jesus Christ--I begged them to accept the use of
our house. During their stay with me they displayed toward me the most
signal charity; and I, on my part, was equally consoled and edified,
until last Pentecost of the year fifteen hundred and ninety-six. At
this festival they assisted me, before their departure, in the solemn
baptism of two prominent Chinese, and of I know not how many others; we
baptized them, with their Bissayan wives, celebrating their marriages
and conferring the nuptial veils, with great solemnity and rejoicing,
the whole city assembling to witness the ceremonies. The two chief men
were Don Lorenco Ungac and Don Salvador Tuigam. The Chinese are not
accustomed to cut their hair, which they comb and make ready every
morning, and wear it fastened on the head in pleasing and graceful
fashion; but when we baptize them we are in the habit of cutting it
off, so that in this way we may have more certainty of their faith and
perseverance. These two, before baptism, had entreated and supplicated
me not to cut off their hair; and in this they were not without reason,
for,