It is quite true that the religious do not mix in things of importance belonging to other tribunals, and the fathers provincial are careful to advise them on this matter; but the opposition to them in their ministry is the cause of the devil and his work.  Some persons, under the pretext of piety, try to destroy the religious, saying that the Indians are free, and protected in their liberty, and that their liberty must not be taken away, but that they may wander as they will.  For the aim of the fathers is to have the Indians live in villages.  All this means harm to the Indian, for he is naturally lazy and a friend of sloth.  If he is allowed, he wanders about aimlessly like a vagabond without working; and, at tribute-paying time, he has not the wherewithal to pay.  He begs a loan of the tribute, and thus he becomes a slave.  This would not happen, were he forced to perform the work from which he flees.  Thus in not allowing him to become a vagabond, his own good is sought.  We know well that there are constables in Espana who arrest and search out the idle.  Is that contrary to the liberty in which we are born?  Certainly not, for idleness is the mother of all the vices, as St. Gregory insinuates, when he names it as the chief cause of the destruction of Sodom:  fuit iniquitas sororis tutu superbia, abundantia et otium. [119] Then, how can what is not opposed to liberty in Espana be opposed to liberty here in a country which rears so remarkable natives?  Therefore for his own good much care must be taken of the Indian.  What the Indian should be, he would become with the knowledge of the priors, so that they may make him settle down, and perform the work that is to make him a Christian, support him, pay his tribute, and make him a man of reason and judgment. [120]

Besides this war waged on us by the secular element, that which was most feared and dangerous, and caused the religious most anxiety, was the spiritual war.  This arose from the zeal of the bishop of Manila, Don Domingo de Salazar, the first bishop of this city a man of vast knowledge on all subjects, and who was not ignorant of the privileges of the mendicant orders in the administration of the natives.  He was bishop in Manila, and thought that he ought not to allow the religious so much freedom in the office that they were administering.  He tried to restrict them in many ways, and refused to concede much.  The religious, however, did not do less than to answer by pointing to the bulls of the supreme pontiffs (called forth many times at the instance of the Catholic sovereigns of Espana), and other motus proprios—­all made for the furtherance of good administration, and that the faith might be propagated throughout the new kingdoms of their domains.  The bishop denied to the ministers everything pertaining to jurisdiction and power; for he imagined that we could not grant dispensation in that second degree for marriages, or exercise any judicial act of those which recently—­that