The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 35, 1640-1649: 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
History
The Philippine Islands, 1493-1898, Volume 35, 1640-1649: 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
Demarcation line of Alexander VI; Missions -- Philippines; Philippines -- Discovery and exploration; Philippines -- History -- Sources
O divine Providence! O eternal Predestination! we men work as men;
but Thou, O Lord, ordainest our works to incomprehensible ends, as an
omnipotent God! In the shipyard of Bagatas, which was established in
the province of Camarines, the Mindanao enemy (whose worship is the
law of Mahomet) made a sudden attack. The galleon which was being
built was burned; and among other persons captured was father Fray
Domingo de los Mártires, who was the confessor of the shipyard, and
a lay-brother, his associate and the nurse of the same shipyard. They
offered and sacrificed the lay-brother to their god or idol, in a storm
that burst upon them. They took the priest with them, he preaching
to them all the time and teaching them our evangelical law whenever
he saw a convenient opportunity for so doing. It happened that a
woman near his apartment who was pregnant came to her time; she had
a very painful labor, and bore an infant, still alive but breathing
its last. The religious begged leave of the mother to baptize it. He
was granted permission and baptized it, and shortly afterward it died
and went to heaven. Many blows and knocks did it cost the religious to
baptize it; but he afterward returned to this province where he died,
and where he recounted the above. Thus did the Mindanao enemy go to
Bagatas, burned the shipyard, captured two religious, sacrificed the
lay-brother to their idols, and preserved the life of the priest;
and for what end? Why did they not sacrifice them both? Because God
had predestined that infant for His glory, and likewise that the
[Moro] king should go to Bagatas, and attain his design, namely, the
burning of the shipyard; and that God should also attain His, namely,
to take that infant to His glory. Inasmuch as that had to be by the
medium of baptism, [He ordained] that the king should take a priest
from Bagatas, preserve his life, give him lodging near the pregnant
mother, and that the mother should have a painful birth; that the
religious should learn of it, and with the mother's permission baptize
the infant; and that it should die at that instant, so that it should
instantly be translated from its Mahometan kingdom to that of Glory,
for so has divine Providence disposed and ordained.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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