Conspicuous among the advantages is the service to God done by caring for His poor, whether Spanish or not, which latter are a forgotten and wretched people—­although some of their masters, for charity and the love and service of God, provide and afford them their support, their good, their care, and their salvation, spiritual and temporal.

The royal Majesty will be much advantaged, because by the charity, good order, and system that will exist, several salaries for persons employed in the said hospital may be dispensed with, and there will be more profit and increase of the revenue; while for the support of the poor there will be a larger fund, in addition to the fact that they will be better cared for and served.  The result will be that health will more abound, and that perhaps mortality will be lessened, together with these great sicknesses—­a great service to God and his royal Majesty, and the state; for his Majesty will have more soldiers, by which he will reap a profit, and in this case a great one, because of the great cost and expense of sending and bringing them here.  The state will also have a larger population, more citizens and men to defend it, in addition to the great private and ordinary benefit received by the people thereof, in saving much expense on their property incurred for the care of their servants and slaves, as well as trouble, care, and responsibility, by their being cared for in the said hospital bodily and spiritually.

Then the importance of this for the souls and bodies, not only of the Spaniards but those of the slaves, may easily be seen and understood.  For the former, the Spaniards, fail not to have and to suffer great and special need in their illnesses and deaths, of someone to minister to them, or at the least to aid and comfort them therein; while the latter, the slaves, as a people cast off and the greater part of them ordinarily belonging to the royal crown, and of so different races—­some or many of them yet to be converted, or imperfectly instructed and entered in the Christian faith—­still more require that there should be someone who in the love of God, and with zeal for the good of their souls, should aid them and secure their welfare and health, spiritual and temporal, in the one case as in the other.

Further, the reward, merit, and crown befitting the service done to God our Lord by this, and to the royal Majesty, and the good to this state and these islands, will not be small; since the result and the advantages which will arise from it are so great and so special, important, and universal; and this is a cause for applying the compassion and Christian charity in this state to the glory and service of God, to the welfare, relief, and consolation, perhaps the salvation, of His creatures and the poor thereof; and to the edification and confusion of the great numbers of barbarians, heathens, and infidels whom we have as witnesses about us looking at us, and who will see nothing that can move and edify them like such works of true charity, performed without worldly payment and profit.