But nothing will make more evident how much a favourite he was of heaven, and how prevalent with that God, whom he declared, than that exemplary judgment with which Divine Justice punished the bold impiety of a man, who, either carried on by his own madness, or exasperated by that of the Bonzas, one day railed at him, with foul injurious language. The saint suffered it with his accustomed mildness; and only said these words to him, with somewhat a melancholy countenance, "God preserve your mouth." Immediately the miscreant felt his tongue eaten with a cancer, and there issued out of his mouth a purulent matter, mixed with worms, and a stench that was not to be endured. This vengeance, so visible, and so sudden, ought to have struck the Bonzas with terror; but their great numbers assured them in some measure; and all of them acting in a body against the saint, each of them had the less fear for his own particular. What raised their indignation to the height, was, that a lady of great birth and riches, wife to one of the most considerable lords of all the court, and very liberal to the pagods, was solemnly baptized with all the family. Seeing they prevailed nothing by the ways they had attempted, and that persons of quality were not less enamoured of the Christian doctrine than the vulgar; and, on the other side, not daring to use violence, in respect of the king's edicts, which permitted the profession of Christianity, they contrived a new artifice, which was to address a complaint to the king, of the king himself, on the part of their country deities. The most considerable of the Bonzas having been elected, in a general assembly for this embassy, went to the prince, and told him, with an air rather threatening than submissive, that they came, in the name of Xaca and Amida, and the other deities of Japan, to demand of him, into what country he would banish them; that the gods were looking out for new habitations, and other temples, since he drove them shamefully out of his dominions, or rather out of theirs, to receive in their stead a stranger God, who usurps to himself divine honours, and will neither admit of a superior nor an equal. They added haughtily, that it is true he was a king; but what a kind of king was a profane man? Was it for him to be the arbiter of religion, and to judge the gods? What probability was there too, that all the religions of Japan should err, and the most prudent of the nation be deceived after the run of so many ages? What would posterity say, when they should hear, that the king of Saxuma, who held his crown from Amida and Xaca, overthrew their altars, and deprived them of the honours which they had so long enjoyed? But what would not the neighbouring provinces attempt, to revenge the injury done to their divinities? that all things seemed lawful to be done on such occasions; and the least he had to fear was a civil war, and that, so much the more bloody, because it was founded on religion.