Opening the text

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

In the province of Nueva Segovia the religious labored hard in the
search throughout mountains and valleys, and other secret places,
for the huts where the devil had been adored, to which those people
used to make pilgrimages in search of health or other favors,
giving offerings of bits of gold, or of stones regarded by them as
precious. The natives dared not take anything from those places, or
cut a reed or a tree from the natural growth of the earth in them,
for fear of death, with which the devil had threatened them. In the
villages on the coast many such little huts were found, with many
little figures and idols in them. The religious burnt and broke the
boxes with the offerings; took the gold and the stones, and all the
other offerings; and burnt and ground to dust everything, and cast it
into the sea, that it might not remain to be a stumbling-block to the
Indians. When the heathen saw that the threats of the devil were not
being carried out, their eyes were opened and they were very eager
to be baptized. Great aid was received from an epidemic of smallpox
which attacked a whole region. In this way the Lord took to himself
many souls, especially of children; for there were many newly baptized
in the province of Pangasinan and in that of Nueva Segovia.] Many of
those who seemed to be near their end recovered after they received
the water of baptism. All, therefore, came to be baptized, and the
Lord, by means of those who recovered, gave authority to the baptism;
while of the vast number who died baptized He peopled heaven with
new angels. This brought great comfort to the missionaries, who,
although worn out and greatly fatigued by going from house to house
baptizing and confessing, and giving the sacraments to sick persons,
saw their labors successful and rewarded by the sending to heaven of
so many souls, and also by the strengthening of their hope that they
should go to accompany those souls in glory; for it is not possible
that these should not be grateful, and pray and strive to obtain
salvation for those who labored, with such zeal, to give it to them
by the means of baptism, without which it cannot be obtained.

Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.