due him is greatly in arrears, which has caused him much privation;
but he does not wish to receive it if it shall proceed from unjust
collection of the tributes.]




Letter from Dasmariñas to Salazar


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