The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803; explorations by early navigators, descriptions of the islands and their peoples, their history and records of the Catholic missions, as related in contemporaneous books and manuscripts, showing the political, economic, commericial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the beginning of the nineteenth century; [Vol. 1, no. 36]

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EPISCOPAL VISITATION

273

and intercessors! both of servants and friends of the
governors, who are usually benefited by religious of
that sort. They are generally aided as much by cunning as by what they spend in order to succeed in
their designs, without considering that they are
trampling upon all the three essential vows of the
estate which they profess-namely, poverty, obedience, and chastity.
Therefore, if the desires of his Majesty are that
the regulars shall live in accordance with their own
laws; that the natives of the Indias be well instructed;
and that they be not molested by the officials of the
two estates: the remedy for that is to leave the regulars to their observance without obliging them to
become more subject than they have been hitherto.
If this is either not advisable or cannot be done, it
would be better for the orders that the secular clergy
should administer those missions.
For how is it possible that such missionaries should
not be covetous if they are inclined to that vice as an
efficacious means to maintain themselves in their
posts, to attain others that are larger and more
wealthy, to defend themselves from the zeal of their
prelates? Such will have the power of loading the
Indians with pecuniary fines and of doubling the
fees; and even perhaps there will not lack some who
will avail themselves of trade and commerce to attain that end.
The subjection will result only in advantage to
the governors and ordinaries, in trouble to the Indians (for the latter furnish the wealth of such
ministers) and disservice to his Majesty; since it
means the ruin of religious discipline. The Indians
being harassed and the governors and ordinaries