In furthest Ind : $b The narrative of Mr Edward Carlyon of the honourable East India Company's serviceGrier, Sydney C.
General
In furthest Ind : $b The narrative of Mr Edward Carlyon of the honourable East India Company's service
Grier, Sydney C.
British -- India -- Fiction; East India Company -- Fiction; India -- Fiction
Now it so happened that there was at Surat, at the time of our sailing
on the third of these voyages, a certain Popish priest, a Portugal,
that did take passage with us to one of the Portugals’ settlements
lower down the coast, and from this gentleman, that showed himself
very agreeable, and no bigot, in spite of his creed, I learned
somewhat touching an old friend that I had of late years (I shame to
say it) near forgot. For asking of him some question touching divers
persons at Goa, though cautiously lest he should recognise me and
denounce me to the Inquisition, and I should thus again come into
their hands, he told me of a band of Jesuit missionaries that was sent
to convert the savage people of a certain great island lying not far
from Java. Of these Paulistins (says my priest), there was one that
had shown himself extreme devoted, more than all the rest, and very
forward in all the work that was undertook, so that when the savages
turned against them and ill-treated them, as they did after the space
of some six months, they did torment him in especial with great
tortures, which did so work upon his frame that soon after, being
rescued by a Spanish ship of war, he died in great suffering and in
the odour of sanctity, and the name of this person was Theodorus.
Furthermore, it was whispered among the other fathers that this Father
Theodorus was wont to use himself thus hardly by reason of a certain
monstrous sin that he had once committed, and this (said my priest to
me in great confidence), was said to be some inadvertence or lightness
of speech of his whereby some heretic had been enabled to escape the
punishment due to his evil deeds, but this was gathered only from his
sayings on his deathbed, and could not be confirmed. But I, as you may
well guess, knew the truth of this matter, though I would not reveal
it to my friendly priest, and grieved myself much to think that the
good man should have conceived that this piece of kindness needed to
be so hardly atoned for. But the priest never knew that he had told
his tale to one so closely involved therein, and he left us at his
journey’s end without remark.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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