I have received your Lordship's letter dated today. When your Lordship
says that, with the great number of opinions I am trying to weaken
yours, I can only reply that my intention certainly has not been such,
but to tell your Lordship with all plainness and truth the state of
the case--which is that I have learned whether this is the general
sentiment of the theologians of this bishopric, as your Lordship said
it was in your conclusions. Even if it were so, I could not do more
than leave it in the same state in which it was, and report it to his
Majesty. But, my lord, if I find some other expression of opinion in
clinging to the majority, I do not think that I am mistaken in it;
and to this end alone I wrote to your Lordship--certainly not that you
should be troubled by what did not come into my thought. Still less
would I have you think that I made use of anyone in writing the letter
which I sent to your Lordship last night, for I certify, upon the life
of my son Luis, that (although that letter seems to your Grace to be
a large harvest from my little stock) there is not in it one word by
another person, save what suggested itself to me from my own papers
and discourses; for all that I wrote there I have told you already
at various times, except those quotations from authors and from the
Council of Lima. Those I asked to be given to me, from memory, by the
person who mentioned them to me as authority for what he stated and
thought; and I quoted them there that your Lordship might see that
I had not made up my mind without foundation. All this I had need of
in order to justify myself in your eyes, for it seems to you that I
could not reply without the help of assistants; but thus far neither
my king nor his advisers have noticed in me such a deficiency as
that. On another occasion your Lordship told me, in Saint Agustin,
[2] that I had read Father Acosta, although I have never in my life
seen his book; and when your Lordship says that his doctrine is very
pernicious, I have nothing to reply but that no book is written by
any father of the Society which is not very carefully looked over
and examined and approved by all the members. But before God, and
in the name of the holy season [Lent] in which we are, I protest
to your Lordship that all these fathers have not erred toward your
Lordship in anything except that, at my request, they said what they
felt. They are very devoted to you; and if there is in my letter
anything worthy of blame, the fault is mine. I say this that your
Lordship may not lay it upon anyone to whom it does not belong. Nor
am I so fond of the far-fetched reasonings of others that in order
to write a letter I need to use anything but the argument which the
subject itself and its accompanying circumstances carry with them. And
one occurs to me now, which is that matter of having laymen, for lack
of religious ministers, look after and bring together the Indians and
instruct them in our holy faith. This, I say, is in conformity with
the royal right of appointment, where the king expressly orders it;
and although your Lordship says that it is not to be believed that
the king with so much risk should have put into my hands alone so
important a business, I am satisfied with myself and I think that his
Majesty is. For any business which is not of my profession I shall not
direct by my own judgment; in this matter, accordingly, I consulted
with those whose business it was, and I pray your Lordship to tell me
if I did wrong in this. Your Grace says that I am new in the islands,
and unlettered; and on the other hand you say that those with whom
I have consulted are misleading me and are mistaken. I do not know
then what recourse your Lordship leaves for me to find it out, if,
as you say, I am a new arrival, and not a theologian, and you take
away from me the recourse to the experienced and the theologians. Now
since enough has been written and answered about this, I beg of your
Lordship not to weary yourself with answering this letter, which
is written only not to leave yours without reply. At least do not
answer until the treatise is finished which you say you are composing,
in which may it please the divine goodness to give your Lordship so
much light that his Majesty, seeing it, may confirm it and approve
it as a thing from your hand--with the result that all may be of
one opinion in this island, and that all the service of God may be
set in order and freed from difficulties, and that these divisions
and encounters may cease; for I assure your Lordship that in many
ways the state is very much scandalized, and that that matter is ill
carried out which you said would be improved concerning the pulpits,
for this affair was discussed with no little liberty in that place
today. May our Lord keep your Lordship. From the office, March 8, 1591.