Thus the Isle del Moro was now to the holy apostle the island of Divine
Hope,[1] as he desired it thenceforth to be named; both because those
things which were there accomplished by God himself, in a miraculous
manner, were beyond all human hope and expectation; and also because the
fruits of his labours surpassed the hopes which had been conceived of
them, when his friends of Ternate would have made him fear that his
voyage would prove unprofitable.

To engage these new Christians, who were gross of apprehension, in the
practice of a holy life, he threatened them with eternal punishments, and
made them sensible of what hell was, by those dreadful objects which they
had before their eyes: For sometimes he led them to the brink of those
gulphs which shot out of their bowels vast masses of burning stones into
the air, with the noise and fury of a cannon; and at the view of those
flames, which were mingled with a dusky smoke that obscured the day, he
explained to them the nature of those pains, which were prepared in an
abyss of fire, not only for idolaters and Mahometans, but also for the
true believers, who lived not according to their faith. He even told
them, the gaping mouths of those flaming mountains were the breathing
places of hell; as appears by these following words, extracted out of one
of his letters on that subject, written to his brethren at Rome: "It
seems that God himself has been pleased, in some measure, to discover the
habitation of the damned to people had otherwise no knowledge of him."

[Footnote 1:_Divina Esperanya_.]

During their great earthquakes, when no man could be secure in any place,
either in his house, or abroad in the open air, he exhorted them to
penitence; and declared to them, that those extraordinary accidents were
caused, not by the souls of the dead hidden under ground, as they