displayed to me the effects of His divine predestination, and how cujus vult miseretur, et quem vult indurat.  I was summoned to baptize an old man who was very ill.  Upon entering his house, I found him in company with two other men, also very aged—­one, indeed, so old that he did not go from the house, nor could he even walk.  This last, hearing me instruct the sick man, began to exert himself, and approached us by creeping across the floor.  Then, with remarkable attention, he began to listen; and, very opportunely, he heard the catechism.  Seeing the satisfaction which the old man and his companion received from hearing the things of our holy faith, I remained a long time, explaining it to them.  When I had baptized the sick man, the other began with eagerness and devotion to ask for the sacrament, saying that he had faith in all that I had said, and was desirous of salvation.  He said that in no case ought I to leave him without baptism, since his old age gave him not many more days of life and those he wished to spend as a Christian; accordingly, I baptized him.  The third old man was blind; and all the time while I was catechizing his companions he spent in twisting some threads, and while the others were receiving so much pleasure and their hearts becoming softened, he was jesting and becoming more and more hardened.  Taking pity on him, I tried to incline him to conversion; but I could do nothing with him, and his soul remained as forsaken as was his body.”

How the Christian church continued to increase in Ogmuc.  Chapter LX.

Every one of these mission-fields [doctrinas] is truly a school of celestial theology; for just as, in the schools, are seen the students assembled at the lectures, and their eagerness in studying and reciting their lessons, and afterward their reception of degrees, so in these missions it is a cause for praise to God to see old men become again children, and the chiefs made humble—­all learning, with eagerness, delight, and perseverance, the Christian doctrine, and writing, repeating, studying, reciting, and singing it.  As a final reward, they receive the degree of holy baptism, a blessing which those people as anxiously seek and desire, and receive with as much joy, as do students the degree of doctor or master.  In some places they are assigned on one Sunday the lesson they are to learn for the next; in others, without being assigned a lesson, they are questioned as to what they know.  In some districts, as here in Ogmuc, are formed as many classes as there are divisions of the Christian doctrine, from making the sign of the cross to the act of confession, and each student, whether child or old man, continues to advance as he learns, until he takes his degree, and is graduated—­that is, until he knows the doctrine—­which, as we said, was done with the old men of Antipolo.  Not only do they, as good students, write their lessons—­mainly in their own characters, and using a piece of a reed