The fourth reason: Your Majesty, in dealing with the religious in your laws of the Indias, has two especial statutes which not only show your desire for peace and your Catholic piety, but most strictly command that efforts be made to secure union and concord among the religious orders, on account of the many and admirable results which ensue therefrom. This union and concord had been established by all the religious orders of Filipinas, and its fruits applauded, long before the reverend archbishop arrived in Manila; and by it those islands were made a paradise for what pertains to the religious orders. The reverend archbishop was the only one who was not pleased with this concord; and therefore he characterizes it in his letters as a conventicle, [36] and of evil tendency and inconsiderate. [37] He not only resented it, but displayed and made known his resentment; he tried to disparage it, through a third person; he had the idea, and repeated it many times, that there was a league against himself; and it is for this reason that he secretly obtained information against it, imposing the penalty of excommunication on the witnesses to maintain secrecy. So far can go the desire of commanding and judging the religious, and grief at not accomplishing it. In so lamentable a condition [are affairs there], when the religious desire not only to see themselves free from the charge of the mission villages, but, if it be possible, away from those islands, and far from a prelate who feels so annoyed at the union and brotherhood of the religious orders--a union dictated by the natural light of reason, prescribed in their general chapters, inculcated by the generals of the orders as being their supreme heads, ordained by your Majesty, suggested by the vicars of Christ, promulgated in the sacred writings, and bequeathed as in His last will by Christ himself to His disciples; and they without it would not have reaped a harvest in the world, nor would He have retained them as His missionaries. The religious admit that the great horror of this prelate at their concord and union gives them much cause for serious reflection; and that when this concord is so persecuted on account of the mission curacies, there is no safer way to maintain it than to separate themselves from those curacies.