who has most illumined it--but also to outsiders, both religious and laymen, by whom the father was greatly revered. [He was born in Madrid, and took the habit in the convent at Guadalajara, being afterward sent to study in the convents at Salamanca and Valladolid. After serving in various posts in Spain he went to the Philippines in 1602, where he almost immediately attained renown. Being sent to Nueva Segovia to learn the native language, he applied himself so well that he became most fluent in it, and used it with the natives for five years. Finally returning to Manila, he became an active and efficient worker there. He was the first regent of the College of Santo Tomas, and lecturer therein, also acting as rector various times. He became provincial for the first time in 1633, and during his term was most careful in the visitation, going even to the island Hermosa.] [The following chapter continues the same matter. The great fervor and devotion of the father gave him the commissaryship of the Holy Office. During his second provincialate he was also assiduous in the visitation, and died shortly after the intermediary junta of 1647 at the age of seventy-three. He left many writings in scholastic and moral theology, which were widely used after his death.] CHAPTER XXXIV Of the election of provincial; the mission that arrived from España; and the despatches that it brought. After the death of the father commissary, Fray Domingo Gonçalez, the province was left in tears and orphaned, because of the lack of columns of that kind in the spiritual edifice; although it is true that such loss will not be the cause of its ruin, for God is the only foundation. But necessarily such losses leave the province sorrowful and wounded; and one who can fully supply the vacancy left by a father who looked after his causes with so great love, and whom all obeyed with so great satisfaction, is not found so easily. Notwithstanding, the foresight of our Elias was able to provide a successor already experienced, a disciple of his own spirit, who succeeded him the first time; [29] and he now charged the fathers before his death to make that man provincial, although he was very aged, being sixty-six years old, albeit a person of good health. Accordingly, he was elected provincial on the second of May, 648, in the convent of Santo Domingo without any opposition. The choice was loudly applauded, both by the province and by the city, for the new prelate was well liked by all, because of his great authority, his impartiality with affability, his zeal with discretion, and his prudence attested by proofs. Although it is true that years usually imprint their changes on men, yet ability makes them superior to the laws of time; and since they are, in addition, on a road that they have traversed, they enter it immediately with many advantages, and act definitely from the beginning--thus avoiding the