In those two years God took from us valuable associates of long experience, who served this holy province much by their example and work for the welfare of the Indians. Father Fray Juan de Arjona, son of the convent of San Pablo el Real in Cordova, [was one]. He had been occupied with great earnestness in the ministries of Pangasinan and Ytui, and there he performed great deeds for the service of God, as those ministries were new. He died at an advanced age in the convent of Santo Domingo in Manila. Father Fray Juan Pabon, native of Montaruches in Estremadura, son of the convent at Truxillo in the province of España, was most accomplished in the language of Nueva Segovia, and suffered great hardships in the conversion of the Indians of Irraya and in the administration of other villages. The love and respect of all who came in contact with him was very great; and the province entrusted to him many posts of honor, and grieved not a little at his death, for he was a model for ministers, and in every respect a pattern of his obligation. CHAPTER XLII Of the intermediary junta of the year sixty-seven; and of other news of this period of our history. On April thirty of the year 1667 was held and celebrated the intermediary junta [in the term] of the father commissary Fray Juan de los Angeles, in our convent of Santo Domingo in Manila--and with new vigor because of the fervor imparted to the province by the fresh nourishment received from its late reënforcement. They proceeded to arrange the ministries, and one more which it seemed advisable to separate, namely, San Miguel at Orion, in the district of Bataan. After knowing the new soldiers for a year, the old and new stones were assigned to their places in order to render this spiritual edifice firm and beautiful. The new rules made were but few, but they were very carefully thought out. The first was that no inferior or subordinate official of the order should visit or write to the alcaldes and superiors of the provinces, and least of all to the governor, without first making known his intention and explaining it to the father provincial--or, in his absence, to the vicars-provincial--respectively. That was and ought to be a necessary measure; and the attempt to carry out the decisions that each minister reaches in his seclusion may be the cause of greater troubles. We must not make a passion of our zeal for defending the Indians, for that is a virtue that essentially demands to be moderated by prudence. An angry letter, or (what is worse) a visit, founded perhaps on a misrepresentation, generally disquiets a superior. He, in his own opinion offended, is vexed; and the Indians themselves, and the rest of the religious, are wont to pay doubly [for the intrusion]. Consequently, it is proper that such matters be managed with much caution and in accordance with obedience, and in the council [of the order], keeping in view the object, which must be the first aim of every good intention.