As Father Simon Rodriguez, who governed the Society in Portugal, had great credit at the court, Father Xavier writ to him at the same time, desiring him, he would support his demands with his interest.  He recommended to him in especial manner, “That he would make choice of those preachers, who were men of known virtue, and exemplary mortification.”  He subjoined, “If I thought the king would not take amiss the counsel of a faithful servant, who sincerely loves him, I should advise him to meditate one quarter of an hour every day, on that divine sentence, ’What does it profit a man to have gained the world, and to lose his soul?’ I should counsel him, I say, to ask of God the understanding and taste of those words, and that he would finish all his prayers with the same words, ’What will it profit a man, to gain the world, and to lose his soul?  ’Tis time,” said Xavier, “to draw him out of his mistake, and to give him notice, that the hour of his death is nearer than he thinks:  that fatal hour, when the King of kings, and Lord of lords, will summon him to judgment, saying to him these dreadful words, ‘Give an account of your administration.’  For which reason, do in such manner, my dear brother, that he may fulfil his whole duty; and that he may send over to the Indies all needful supplies, for the increase of faith.”

Xavier also wrote from Cochin to the fathers of the society at Rome; and gave them an account, at large, of his voyages to Malacca, to Amboyna, to the Moluccas, and the Isle del Moro; with the success which God had given to his labours.  But he forgot not the relation of his danger in the Strait of Ceylon, and made it in a manner which was full of consolation to them.

“In the height of the tempest,” said he in his letter, “I took for my intercessors with God, the living persons of our society, with all those who are well affected to it; and joined to these, all Christians, that I might be assisted with the merits of the spouse of Christ, the holy Catholic Church, whose prayers are heard in heaven, though her habitation be on earth:  afterwards I addressed myself to the dead, and particularly to Piere le Fevre, to appease the wrath of God.  I went through all the orders of the angels, and the saints, and invoked them all.  But to the end that I might the more easily obtain the pardon of my innumerable sins, I desired for my protectress and patroness, the most holy Mother of God, and Queen of Heaven, who, without difficulty, obtains from her beloved Son whatsoever she requests.  In conclusion, having reposed all my hope in the infinite merits of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ, being encompassed with this protection, I enjoyed a greater satisfaction, in the midst of this raging tempest, than when I was wholly delivered from the danger.