Fray Antonio once more ascended the pulpit and before the assembled colony announced his text: “Repetam scientiam meam a principio et operatorem meum probabo justum” (Job xxxvi. 3). Not only did he repeat the sense of what he had already said, but he elaborated still more forcibly his theme, and ended by announcing that the sacraments of the Church would henceforth be refused to all who persisted in the evil courses he denounced, and defying his hearers to complain of him in Spain. Amongst the men on whose startled ears these denunciations fell, were hidalgos of high birth, reduced by reckless courses to expatriate themselves in search of fortunes with which to return and resume their extravagances in Spain; contemptuous of all forms of labour, they passed their enforced exile in gambling, dicing, and debauchery in the company of their Indian mistresses, chosen among the native beauties. They alternately courted the favour of the Viceroy or intrigued against him as seemed most profitable to their interests; they displayed few of the virtues and most of the vices common to their class in Spain. Others belonged in the unfailing and numerous category of adventurers, ever ready to play a new stake in a new country; they constituted an equally reckless but more resourceful element in the colony, though their contribution to the moral tone of the community was likewise insignificant. Columbus had sought and obtained an authorisation to deport from Spain criminals under sentence of either partial or perpetual banishment, while other delinquents had had their sentences remitted on condition that they would emigrate to the Indies. So dissolute was the general tone of the colonies and so depraved the habits of many of the colonists that Columbus could, with sincerity, exclaim, “I vow that numbers of men have gone to the Indies who did not deserve water from God or man.” Las Casas, who loved sinners as much as he loathed sin, observed this motley population with a more tolerant eye and affirmed that even amongst those who had lost their ears, he still found sufficiently honest men; it was not difficult to lose one’s ears in those days. The voice of Fray Antonio cried indeed in a moral wilderness! But however far these men had strayed from the true spirit of their religion, they had no intention of foregoing the ministrations of the church, and they clung tenaciously to the outward observance of forms and ceremonies as an offset against their lax conformity to its moral precepts.