that the entire power of the sovereigns must minister to this superior end, as sons of the Church and assistants of the apostolic voice, which is being continued in the successes of the first preaching.  If he had refused to yield one jot in his severity to his northern vassals, [273] or to grant them liberty for their consciences, why should he relent toward the pagans and Mahometans, who are the harvest that God has assigned him, in order to enrich the Church with those so remote children?  By this wise he enjoined silence on the discussion, and with this glorious aim the decision has ever been made when zeal or human convenience has discussed the abandonment of those states....  This religious motive influenced Felipo; but, besides it, those who had experience of those Asiatic sources of wealth urged others.  The most abundant wealth consists of diamonds, rubies, large and seed pearls, amber, musk, civet, and camphor, from Borneo and China; vermilion, coral, quicksilver, copper, and white cloth, from Cambaya and Mengala; rugs, carpets, fine counterpanes, camlets, from Persia; brocades, ivory, rhubarb, cardamoms, cassia, [274] incense, benzoin, wax, china, lac for medicine and dyes, cloves, and mace, from Banda; with gold, silver, and pearls, medicinal woods, aroes, eagle-wood, calambuco, [275] ebony, and innumerable other rare plants, drugs, spices, and ornaments.  They say that Venecia lost all this when the commerce passed to Portugal [276] (Book ii, pp. 84-86)....

[While the war between the Portuguese and the natives is at its height, a galleon passes which is later found to have been neither Spanish nor Portuguese, as the natives fear, “but a ship of Venetians, private persons, on its way from Manila to China, with various bartered merchandise of those states and of the east” (Book ii, p. 89).

A native envoy visits Felipe II in Lisbon, but fails to accomplish much.  The later wars between Portuguese and Spaniards and natives are characterized by assistance for the latter from English and Dutch sources.  King Felipe “especially to recover Temate,” turns “his eyes to the convenience afforded by all the Filipinas, to a greater extent than India.”  Later he orders by “his royal decree” that “all the governors of the Filipinas should be instructed to aid the Malucas, and all the Indian states of the Portuguese crown; for this may be done more conveniently from those islands than from India itself” (Book iv, p. 140).  Argensola recurring again to the proposition of abandoning the Philippines and other islands, says:]

The reader should also consider, that although avarice is sometimes mixed up in the ministry of the preaching of the gospel, and lawless acts are committed by our captains and soldiers, yet such excesses do not make the cause less just.  He should consider also that, supposing that his Majesty should choose, for excellent state reasons (as we said were proposed), to abandon those districts of Asia, as the Chinese did, and to