does not hasten with vote and
money to fit out fleets to oppose the enemy. But if not then each
proposition is a labyrinth, whence he who makes it cannot unravel
himself, although Ariadne gives him a thread to guide him. Hence it
follows, either that squadrons are not prepared of size sufficient to
warn the aggressors, or if they are prepared, they set sail when it
would be better for them not to, for they only occasion the vassals
new trouble. Let no one imagine that the matter of these two numbers
includes imagination or lack of truth. This is proved by authentic
documents in what touches the past; while so far as the present century
is concerned (during which the same persecutions have been repeatedly
shown), experience has given me knowledge of such injuries, when I,
as procurator-general and secretary of the province of Philipinas,
found that I had to solicit relief for the persecuted Indians and
for the afflicted religious. It is also certain that the same thing
happened in almost all the wars of which we are speaking, so that
our oppressed missionaries had no other consolation than that of God,
in the pains that it was indispensable for them to suffer, and which
we shall now begin to relate.

321. We have already mentioned in various parts of this history,
that when our Recollects arrived at the Philipinas Islands, in
order to illumine them with the splendors of the faith, and to fight
like well-ordained astral bodies against the sissara of the abyss,
they chose with apostolic strength the most difficult districts,
the islands of the most barbaric people, and the places where, if the
light of the gospel had shone, it had allowed itself to be seen only
in fitful gleams. Hence it is that our ministers are the most exposed
to peril and danger among all those of the archipelago; for they are
very distant, not only from Manila, but also among themselves from
one another, and surrounded by enemies to the Christian name. Each
district consists of many villages and even of distinct islands. Since
all of them have a right to the bread of the doctrine, which is
the only food for souls, the religious, in order to attend to that
obligation, has to be in continual movement. He must travel by sea
threatened by so many dangers to his life, among frights and chance;
and he who considers it of value to endure them and despise them, can
only form a just opinion of them. They do this without other profit
than the spiritual, enduri