“The discalced Augustinian religious who live in these Philippinas Islands are gathering a very large harvest here in the conversion of souls.  Not less known are the advances that Christianity is making in the kingdoms of Japan by their preaching and teaching, where in the years one thousand six hundred and twenty-nine and thirty, six religious of the same institute suffered martyrdom, together with many others, members of the third order, [41] or Mantellatos, and confriars of the girdle [correa] of our father St. Augustine, all converted to the faith and instructed by the same discalced religious who are in those regions.  Now, to relate the news that we have just received, two of the same religious are suffering the most exquisite torments that can be imagined, after two years of the hardest kind of imprisonment.  They are suffering also, in the ministries and convents which they maintain in these islands, great discomfort and hardship; for the Indians in their charge are the most unbridled and fierce of all those known in this archipelago, as experience of last year proved, when the Indians killed four religious.  Their death and the evident danger of their lives did not frighten the others, and therefore other missionaries did not hesitate to go.”

While that prelate was bishop of Nueva Segovia, he also wrote two letters, one to the Catholic king of Espana, and the other to the above congregation, of the following tenor: 

“The Order of the discalced religious of the Order of our father St. Augustine are of considerable importance in these islands, and they are gathering much fruit with their teaching and their good example.  They have many missions in districts remote from this city, as they were the last who came to the islands, etc.”

“The discalced Augustinian religious,” he says in the other, “who reside in these Philippinas Islands are gathering large harvests in all parts in the conversion of the souls of these pagans, as they have done in the kingdom of Iapon.  Two years ago six professed religious of the same order were slain there, by fire and sword, for the preaching of the gospel, and the conversion of souls, in addition to seventy other persons who suffered the same death, in the same kingdom, for the preservation of the faith, which they had received then through the ministry of two Spanish religious of the same institute, who were preaching it there.  The two latter are also now in prison for the same reason, and it is thought will already have perished by fire or in some other way.”

Don Fray Pedro de Arze, bishop of Zugbu, was more minute in describing the labors and efforts of our religious, in a letter informing the sacred Congregation of the Propaganda of the Faith, in which he says the following: