The reverend archbishop is not ignorant of the necessity for baptism; nevertheless, no adult can be forced to receive it. The profession of a religious is null, if any notable force intervened to bring it about; and marriage is of no validity if a person wholly free were in like manner compelled to marry. For these estates demand liberty, and, no less, inspiration from God; and there is nothing of this where there is only force and violence, for then the estate which was to be a means for salvation is converted by such compulsion into a snare and destruction. For one who is not a parish priest by title to become one is a change of no less importance than for a bachelor to marry, or a layman to become a religious; and for the reverend archbishop to claim that, where others are free, the religious should be forced into a mode of life full of risk, and for an object which can be secured without that compulsion, is to extend his claims further than perhaps he is aware, and to accumulate more material for the account that he so greatly fears. For one thing, [his idea] that, even supposing that the regulars are willing to be curas, they can be forced into subjection, and this would be more tolerable; and, for another, that if they do not choose, for all the reasons here stated, to be curas, ecclesiastical and secular authorities may use violence to make them enter the office of curas by title--and this is very far from what Holy Writ, the general councils, and the holy fathers teach, upon which there is ample material for volumes. The religious orders are greatly surprised that the reverend archbishop, occupied with zealous cares for feeding his sheep, and by holy fear regarding his account to God, should break out with acts of violence against the religious only--and not do so in order that secular priests should go from Europa or from Nueva España to be parish priests in Filipinas; and that his Majesty may give to the said seculars, for their travels and voyages, the aid that he grants for the same purpose to the religious. If they should constrain the reverend archbishop to state why he does not ask or seek this for the seculars, the world would know what the religious orders have accomplished and merited in the Filipinas, and what they are still doing; and it would also know that, although in the words of Christ the laborer is worthy of wages and recompense, in place of any new remuneration to the said religious orders the reverend archbishop is attempting by his claims to introduce them into a labyrinth of entanglements, discords, and dissensions.