This argument gains more force when attention is paid to the immense distance [from España] of those islands, where this is a current saying, or almost a proverb, among those who are in power, "Let them write to Madrid and Roma whatever fairy-tale they please at the time; no one will be disturbed by it while the letters are on the way, or while the decision is being made and until the ordinances arrive." And therefore it results that although the reverend archbishop arrived at Manila in the year 97, it is now the year 700 when the clamors and disturbances which with his arrival were experienced [in the islands] find an echo in your Council of the Indias--troubles which still are endured, because it is necessary to wait a considerable time for the arrival at the islands themselves of your royal provisions. And when the decree already mentioned of the year 87, and another previous one of the same tenor by the queen-mother our sovereign (who is now with God), were not obeyed, there is little or no ground for the religious to hope that other decrees of that sort will be obeyed. In both cases, the mission curacies were resigned, and in this last one much more has been suffered; and as it is not well that these occurrences and disputes be repeated, and as it is intolerable to live in controversies for the sake of curacies, to any one who is not wedded to them, the religious orders intend, by the said resignation, to make an end, once for all, of all this contention. The second reason: In Filipinas today the religious orders see themselves dragged along and reduced to a most abject condition, in which their ministers can, according to the divine oracles and the teaching of holy men, gain little esteem or fruit while they exercise these under so much reproach. If the edict of visitation which the reverend archbishop commanded to be posted in the village of Tondo (a mission village which is in charge of the Order of St. Augustine) be read, among innumerable other questions will be found these: "Whether the minister in charge goes without the ecclesiastical garb, or without suitable clothing? Whether he goes without cutting his beard? Whether by day or by night he carries weapons, or is indecently clothed?"