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 royal right of appointment, where the king expressly orders it; and although your Lordship says that it is not to be believed that the king with so much risk should have put into my hands alone so important a business, I am satisfied with myself and I think that his Majesty is.  For any business which is not of my profession I shall not direct by my own judgment; in this matter, accordingly, I consulted with those whose business it was, and I pray your Lordship to tell me if I did wrong in this.  Your Grace says that I am new in the islands, and unlettered; and on the other hand you say that those with whom I have consulted are misleading me and are mistaken.  I do not know then what recourse your Lordship leaves for me to find it out, if, as you say, I am a new arrival, and not a theologian, and you take away from me the recourse to the experienced and the theologians.  Now since enough has been written and answered about this, I beg of your Lordship not to weary yourself with answering this letter, which is written only not to leave yours without reply.  At least do not answer until the treatise is finished which you say you are composing, in which may it please the divine goodness to give your Lordship so much light that his Majesty, seeing it, may confirm it and approve it as a thing from your hand—­with the result that all may be of one opinion in this island, and that all the service of God may be set in order and freed from difficulties, and that these divisions and encounters may cease; for I assure your Lordship that in many ways the state is very much scandalized, and that that matter is ill carried out which you said would be improved concerning the pulpits, for this affair was discussed with no little liberty in that place today.  May our Lord keep your Lordship.  From the office, March 8, 1591.

Letter from the Governor to the Bishop