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. 13]

1604-16051

CHIRINO'S E.ATION

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he approached her, gave her instruction, and baptized her. On the following day, when he was setting out from the village at the same hour, his heart
would not allow him to depart without first visiting
his sick people. He gained the little hut, and found
therein a dead person, shrouded. He inquired who it
was and they told him that it was Ana (the name of
the woman whom he had baptized the day before).
He continued his way, praising the divine Providence and judgments of God, who had thus predestined the lot of that soul. We were informed that a
sick man lay at the point of death, far out from the
village. The road thither was hard to descry in the
darkness of the night, and abounded with serpents,
which were continually encountered, stretched out
in the road. In addition to this, a very broad river
must be passed, with rapid current and full of crocodiles - which, when they become ravenous, rush upon
anything. Yet all these obstacles were of less importance than one soul redeemed by the blood of
Jesus Christ; so the father went to visit his sick man,
and, with a certain medicine, in the name of Jesus
Christ our Lord, cured and comforted him. But the
marvel was that on the way he found another sick
person, a woman, apparently in less danger; he baptized her, and she died immediately, while the sick
man, for whom the father had undertaken all that
hardship, was healed.
An Indian, finding himself in the clutches and
jaws of a crocodile, covered with wounds, and almost
dead, began to invoke the most holy name of Jesus,
which a little before he had heard in the sermon of a
father; and our Lord was pleased that the savage
beast should release him.