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
Aduarte, Diego
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
a short time they did a great work, and baptized not only those of
this village, but also those who dwelt near there. They left their
old sites and, gathering in this one, formed a new settlement. The
church was built under the patronage of our Lady of the Rosary,
and here the Christian faith went on flourishing until the devil,
hating so much good, disturbed them and caused them to fall away for a
time--to their great harm, spiritual and temporal; though afterward,
recognizing their error, they returned to their obedience to their
Creator, as will be told hereafter. Almost in the same manner, and
following the same course, another church was built at this time in
the high region at the head of the great river, six days' journey
from the city of the Spaniards, in a village named Batavag. Here
father Fray Luis Flores, who was afterward a holy martyr in Japon,
gathered together seven little hamlets, making one very peaceful
one. He preached to them, taught them, and baptized many, without
receiving any other assistance in all this than that which the Lord
promises those who, for love of Him and from zeal for souls, go alone,
disarmed, and in gentleness among heathen. To such no evil can happen,
since, if the heathen hear the teaching and are converted, all is
happiness and joy both in heaven and for the preachers, since the
sinners are converted; while if they refuse to admit them, or if,
when the preachers are admitted, the heathen do not become converts,
the preachers have a certain reward, as the Lord has promised. This
reward will be much greater if the heathen, in addition to refusing
to be converted, treat them ill, or take their lives from them, for
the sake of the Lord whom they preach. Therefore in this as in all the
other conversions the religious have always gone alone, unarmed, and
in poverty, but sure that they are to suffer no evil. The results in
Batavag were very good, although they did not last many years because,
desirous of a greater laxity of life than the divine law permits,
the natives went up into the neighboring mountain, apostatizing from
the faith which many of them had professed in baptism.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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