Page:The Philippine Islands, 1493-1803 (Volume 08).djvu/44

 from the Council of Lima. Those I asked to be given to me, from memory, by the person who mentioned them to me as authority for what he stated and thought; and I quoted them there that your Lordship might see that I had not made up my mind without foundation. All this I had need of in order to justify myself in your eyes, for it seems to you that I could not reply without the help of assistants; but thus far neither my king nor his advisers have noticed in me such a deficiency as that. On another occasion your Lordship told me, in Saint Agustin, that I had read Father Acosta, although I have never in my life seen his book; and when your Lordship says that his doctrine is very pernicious, I have nothing to reply but that no book is written by any father of the Society which is not very carefully looked over and examined and approved by all the members. But before God, and in the name of the holy season [Lent] in which we are, I protest to your Lordship that all these fathers have not erred toward your Lordship in anything except that, at my request, they said what they felt. They are very devoted to you; and if there is in my letter anything worthy of blame, the fault is mine. I say this that your Lordship may not lay it upon anyone to whom it does not belong. Nor am I so fond of the far-fetched reasonings of others that in order to write a letter I need to use anything but the argument which the subject itself and its accompanying circumstances carry with them. And one occurs to me now, which is that matter of having laymen, for lack of religious ministers, look after and bring together the Indians and instruct them in our holy faith. This, I say, is in conformity with the