As for the Gentiles, the life they led resembled that of beasts rather than of men.  Uncleanness was risen to the last excess amongst them; and the least corrupt were those who had no religion.  The greatest part of them adored the devil under an obscene figure, and with ceremonies which modesty forbids to mention.  Some amongst them changed their deity every day; and the first living creature which happened to meet them in the morning was the object of their worship, not excepting even dogs or swine.  In this they were uniform, that they all offered bloody sacrifices to their gods; and nothing was more common, than to see bleeding infants on the altars, slaughtered by the hands of their own parents.

Such manifold abominations inflamed the zeal of Father Xavier.  He wished himself able at the same time, to have applied remedies to them all; yet thought himself obliged to begin with the household of faith, according to the precept of St Paul; that is to say, with the Christians:  and amongst them he singled out the Portuguese, whose example was like to be most prevalent with the baptised Indians.  Behold in what manner he attempted this great enterprise of reformation.

To call down the blessing of heaven on this difficult employment, he consecrated the greatest part of the night to prayers, and allowed himself at the most but four hours of sleep; and even this little repose was commonly disturbed:  for, lodging in the hospital, and lying always near the sick, as his custom had been at Mozambique, his slumber was broken by their least complaint, and he failed not to rise to their relief.

He returned to his prayers at break of day, after which he celebrated mass.  He employed the forenoon in the hospitals, particularly in that of the lepers, which is in one of the suburbs of Goa.  He embraced those miserable creatures one after the other, and distributed amongst them those alms which he had been begging for them from door to door.  After this he visited the prisons, and dealt amongst them the same effects of charity.

In coming back, he made a turn about the town, with his bell in his hand, and gave a loud summons to the fathers of families, that, for the love of God, they would send their children and their slaves to catechism.

The holy man was convinced in his heart, that if the Portuguese youth were well instructed in the principles of religion, and formed betimes to the practice of good life, Christianity, in a little time, would be seen to revive in Goa; but in case the children grew up without instruction or discipline, there was no remaining hope, that they who sucked in impiety and vice, almost with their milk, should ever become sincere Christians.

The little children gathered together in crowds about him, whether they came of their own accord, through a natural curiosity, or that their parents sent them, out of the respect which they already had for the holy man, howsoever vicious themselves.  He led them to the church, and there expounded to them the apostles’ creed, the commandments of God, and all the practices of devotion which are in use amongst the faithful.