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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THE PHILIPPINE ISLANDS

[Vol. 36

being interested parties, all contrary to his Majesty's
holy intent, the Indians will come to have disinclination instead of love to affairs of the faith and religion. And I dare affirm that Christians thus
instructed will be Christians rather by force than in
their hearts.
In no part of the Yndias can one more intelligently
expect that the regulars will be strict of observance
than in the Filipinas Islands; for all their missions,
even those in the suburbs of Manila, are surrounded
by heathen and Moros- Chinese, Japanese, Mindanaos, Joloans, and Borneans, and people of almost
all the other kingdoms of the Orient whose conversion is so anxiously desired. For if those heathen
and Moro nations, who have before their eyes the
conduct of the Christians, come to observe it as not
at all in accord with right, not only among the secular clergy but among the regulars - who are by their
profession teachers of the law and are bound to furnish a good example as the rule of their observance -
what would they think, or what notion would they
form of it? It is learned from some mandarins of
Great China who were converted to our holy faith
because they saw in all the ministers of it for many
years a conformity of morals that was regulated to
natural law, that they prudently conclude therefrom
that the law which taught such actions could not be
other than true. If the Chinese and Japanese who
live in those islands should see the evangelical ministers acting against all natural dictates, they would
come to a contrary conclusion, for they have no
greater arguments for belief than those which come
through their eyes.
The regulars of the Filipinas Islands have well