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. 44]

I700-I736]

JESUIT MISSIONS

I"3

the sharp spur, managed with discretion, qui parcit
virgae, odit filium. The harvest in this field is like
that which the parable represents; there is the greatest and the least, just as it is throughout the universe.
There is fertile ground and sterile; there are untilled
and stony tracts; some land is productive, and some
is full of bramble-patches. But what soil is free
from darnel and tares?3' Where are lilies found
without having nettles near them? In what garden
do the roses, magnificent and fragrant, surpass [the
other flowers], without the thorns that surround
them? He who is always declaiming, in either a
gloomy or a careless spirit, against the faith and
Christian spirit of the Indians, shows great ignorance of the world, if not levity or malice. If he
would but reflect that not many years ago this was a
land overgrown with the thorns and brambles of
ignorance, unbelief, and barbarism, he would give a
thousand thanks to the Lord at the sight of so much
fruit obtained for heaven; and still more [thankful
would he be] if he cast his glance on Japon, India,
and Africa, and on Grecia, Inglaterra, Dinamarca,
and other kingdoms where the Christian religion
was [once] so flourishing, but which today are an
abyss of follies and errors-the cause, alasl being
their ignorance or their perverseness.... Whoever will read the Instructions of St. Francis Xavier
for the missionaries of India, and also this account
30 Spanish, azicate; "a long-necked Moorish spur with a rowel
at the end of it" (Appleton's Velazquez's Dictionary). The Latin
quotation means, "He who spares the rod hates his son."
31 Spanish, lolios y zizanas. Lolio is an old form of joyo; and
both joyo and zizaia (modern, cizaja) refer, according to Appleton's Velazquez's Dictionary, to the common darnel, or Lolium
temulentum.