s. But before God, and
in the name of the holy season [Lent] in which we are, I protest
to your Lordship that all these fathers have not erred toward your
Lordship in anything except that, at my request, they said what they
felt. They are very devoted to you; and if there is in my letter
anything worthy of blame, the fault is mine. I say this that your
Lordship may not lay it upon anyone to whom it does not belong. Nor
am I so fond of the far-fetched reasonings of others that in order
to write a letter I need to use anything but the argument which the
subject itself and its accompanying circumstances carry with them. And
one occurs to me now, which is that matter of having laymen, for lack
of religious ministers, look after and bring together the Indians and
instruct them in our holy faith. This, I say, is in conformity with
the royal right of appointment, where the king expressly orders it;
and although your Lordship says that it is not to be believed that
the king with so much risk should have put into my hands alone so
important a business, I am satisfied with myself and I think that his
Majesty is. For any business which is not of my profession I shall not
direct by my own judgment; in this matter, accordingly, I consulted
with those whose business it was, and I pray your Lordship to tell me
if I did wrong in this. Your Grace says that I am new in the islands,
and unlettered; and on the other hand you say that those with whom
I have consulted are misleading me and are mistaken. I do not know
then what recourse your Lordship leaves for me to find it out, if,
as you say, I am a new arrival, and not a theologian, and you take
away from me the recourse to the experienced and the theologians. Now
since enough has been written and answered about this, I beg of your
Lordship not to weary yourself with answering this letter, which
is written only not to leave yours without reply. At least do not
answer until the treatise is finished which you say you are composing,
in which may it please the divine goodness to give your Lordship so
much light that his Majesty, seeing it, may confirm it and approve
it as a thing from your hand--with the result that all may be of
one opinion in this island, and that all the service of God may be
set in order and freed from difficulties, and that these divisions
and encounters may cease; for I assure your Lordship that in many
ways the state is very much scandalized, and that that matter is ill