He promises to put
a stop to the preaching by his clergy on public matters. The salary
due him is greatly in arrears, which has caused him much privation;
but he does not wish to receive it if it shall proceed from unjust
collection of the tributes.]

Letter from Dasmarinas to Salazar

I have received your Lordship's letter dated today. When your Lordship
says that, with the great number of opinions I am trying to weaken
yours, I can only reply that my intention certainly has not been such,
but to tell your Lordship with all plainness and truth the state of
the case--which is that I have learned whether this is the general
sentiment of the theologians of this bishopric, as your Lordship said
it was in your conclusions. Even if it were so, I could not do more
than leave it in the same state in which it was, and report it to his
Majesty. But, my lord, if I find some other expression of opinion in
clinging to the majority, I do not think that I am mistaken in it;
and to this end alone I wrote to your Lordship--certainly not that you
should be troubled by what did not come into my thought. Still less
would I have you think that I made use of anyone in writing the letter
which I sent to your Lordship last night, for I certify, upon the life
of my son Luis, that (although that letter seems to your Grace to be
a large harvest from my little stock) there is not in it one word by
another person, save what suggested itself to me from my own papers
and discourses; for all that I wrote there I have told you already
at various times, except those quotations from authors and from the
Council of Lima. Those I asked to be given to me, from memory, by the
person who mentioned them to me as authority for what he stated and
thought; and I quoted them there that your Lordship might see that
I had not made up my mind without foundation. All this I had need of
in order to justify myself in your eyes, for it seems to you that I
could not reply without the help of assistants; but thus far neither
my king nor his advisers have noticed in me such a deficiency as
that. On another occasion your Lordship told me, in Saint Agustin,
[2] that I had read Father Acosta, although I have never in my life
seen his book; and when your Lordship says that his doctrine is very
pernicious, I have nothing to reply but that no book is written by
any father of the Society which is not very carefully looked over
and examined and approved by all the member