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The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 31, 1640: 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, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth centuryAduarte, Diego

History

The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 31, 1640: 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, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century

Name: The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898: Volume 31, 1640: 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, commercial and religious conditions of those islands from their earliest relations with European nations to the close of the nineteenth century
Author: Aduarte, Diego

Aduarte, Diego

Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources

one of the most glorious things in Christendom, not because of its
income and its building (though in these respects it is very good),
but because of the many who at the hour of death are baptized in it
with many indications of going hence to glory, as being newly cleansed
of their faults and their sins by baptism.

The rich harvest which was reaped in the conversion of these Chinese,
as well by preaching to those in health as by the care and instruction
of the sick, was so sweet to father Fray Miguel that it caused in
him glowing desires to go to Great China. It seemed to him, and with
reason, that there, without abandoning their own country and the
company of their fathers, sons, wives, and kinsmen, which here are
great impediments to their conversion, the Christians converted would
be many more, and far better ones. Hence he was always making plans to
go to that great realm, where the devil is so strongly fortified that
he does not even permit the entrance of those who might, by preaching
the gospel, cast him from the throne which he unjustly holds among
that people. He was finally successful in making his entry into that
kingdom, and went there with father Fray Juan de Castro, who was
the first provincial of this province. They suffered the hardships
which have been described in chapter twenty-six, together with the
marvelous miracles which the divine pity wrought in their favor for
the preachers of the gospel. When they returned to Manila from China,
where they had suffered so much, the orders of their superior directed
them to undertake another longer and more painful voyage, which was
to España. They were to accompany and assist the bishop, Don Fray
Domingo de Salaçar, who was going to discuss very important business
with his Majesty; and were also to endeavor to bring back religious
from España, to aid in the great labor which rested upon the religious
of this province in the conversion of the heathen of these lands,
He did not take for this journey money or anything else, or even more
clothes than those which he wore, so that he did not have a change of
clothes in the whole voyage, which lasts for six months. A ship is so
much an enemy to cleanliness that, when he reached Mexico, his habit
was in such a condition that the father prior of the convent in that
city was obliged to give him clothes wholly out of charity. During
the voyage he fell into the sea and was miraculously brought back to
the ship by the Lord at the prayer of the good bishop--who afflicted
by the accident, prayed the Lord briefly but devotedly for the remedy
of it; and he gained what he desired, for the Lord is very quick to
listen to the prayers of His servants. The time between the end of
this voyage and that which follows afterward over the Mar del Norte
[i.e., Atlantic Ocean] was spent by father Fray Miguel in the convent
which offered him hospitality, but without the dispensations which
the reception of hospitality usually brings with it. He was the

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