from admitting to dignidades, canonries, and benefices professed religious who have been expelled from the holy religious orders as a penalty and punishment for their offenses, inasmuch as the abovesaid was prohibited by law and sacred canons established in a most Christianlike manner by the provincial Mexican Council.  That council enacted a special decree expressly forbidding such appointments, and mentioning the many just reasons for their action, and the state of affairs in the Yndias demanding it, inasmuch as the prelates and venerable fathers who attended the council were very well acquainted with the Yndias.  It is not the least consideration that the said expelled religious cannot reap a harvest in a century.  Nor can they derive any advantages which will result in a real adjustment of their difficulties, so that thus with greater ease they, returning to their senses, may aspire to regain their habit and order which they before professed. [Such proceeding by the ecclesiastical authorities] will restrain the diligence and effort that other religious might employ in deserting their orders if they saw the said expelled religious given posts as dignidades.  As they saw, and considered as assured, the great service they would be doing to God our Lord and to his Catholic Majesty who is incurring so heavy expenses to his royal patrimony in bringing each of the said religious to the Yndias—­and these are the greatest consolations that he sends to these so remote islands, a plant which, because of its tenderness and newness in the faith, is shocked at the change that is seen in the habits [i.e., robes] of the expelled religious.  This furnished a reason to his Majesty, Carlos Fifth, our sovereign of glorious memory, for the same prohibition; and he ordered that, as soon as the said religious were expelled from their holy orders, they be put aboard ship and sent to the kingdoms of Castilla, and not be allowed to remain or live in the Yndias.  Therefore, having thoroughly examined, conferred over, and considered, they all unanimously and fully in accord resolved to enact a statute in this archbishopric in the following form and manner:  ’We ordain that, now and henceforth, no one of the professed religious expelled from the religious orders now, or hereafter to be, established—­whether from the religious orders now established in the Church of God, or from those which shall be established later—­or the professed members of the fourth vow [58] of the Society of Jesus, shall be admitted or appointed to dignidades, canonries, or curacies, of Spaniards or of Indians, throughout this archbishopric.  Those expelled from the said Society of Jesus, and who shall not have taken the fourth vow, may, three years after their expulsion and dismissal from the said order, if they have given therein a good example in their lives and morals, and if they are of such stamp that they may be of advantage for the edification and welfare of souls, be admitted by the prelate, now or hereafter,