[Among the most highly honored religious in this province a very important place is taken by Don Fray Diego de Soria, second bishop of Nueva Segovia. It was he who began the conversion in this province, and who might therefore be called the father in Christ of that church. Father Fray Diego was a native of Yebenes, near Toledo, and professed religion in the convent of the order at Ocaña. Giving signs of promise as a student and a preacher, he was sent to the college of Alcala, where he continued to follow the rigorous rules of the order forbidding the eating of flesh. When the holy and prudent vicar-general, Fray Juan de Castro, assigned his companions to their various duties, he gave father Fray Diego the chief place by making him superior of the convent which was to be founded in the city of Manila. The number of the religious at that time was so few that the superior of Manila rang the bells, assisted in the singing, took messages to the sacristy, and was general confessor of the many who, influenced by the great virtue of the new religious (the Dominicans), came to put their consciences in their care. The Lord had endowed father Fray Diego with two qualities which appear to be opposed to each other. The first was natural freedom of speech in rebuking evil with great courage and zeal; the other was marked gentleness and suavity of nature. At one time when the governor of Manila--who was a very good Christian and a learned man [6]--was confessing to him, a certain difficulty arose in which it seemed to father Fray Diego that the governor had erred. When the governor strove to defend his conduct, father Fray Diego said to him that in this matter he was, although learned, not a judge but a party, and indeed defendant; that in cases of conscience the confessor alone was the judge; and that, after reflection, he had formed his conclusion, which was that the governor's conduct could not be approved. He required him to accept his decision or to seek a confessor elsewhere. The governor, with tears in his eyes, professed his readiness to obey. At one time when a very rich man was sick, and feared death and the judgment, he sent to call father Fray Diego to him that he might confess; but the father refused to go, sending back as an answer that the rich man must return the tribute which he had wrongfully taken from an encomienda, and must give the Indians there a minister. The sick man put himself in father Fray Diego's hands, and thus his conscience was composed, to the great advantage of the wronged Indians. When the bishop of these islands, Don Fray Domingo de Salaçar, was about to set out for España, he asked for father Fray Diego as a companion; but the governor at that time [i.e., Gomez Perez Dasmariñas], being very different from the previous one, refused to permit him to go to España, fearing the freedom with which he might speak there. Father Fray Diego was therefore sent to Pangasinan, where he learned the language of the