r disgusted at being
there; and it will be a sufficient cause for him to retire from his
ministries and even to attempt to return to Espana.

And even though the superiors may order the religious to live in
their missions with that subjection, it may be that they cannot
obtain it by entreaty from them, and that the religious will excuse
themselves by saying with St. Paul: Unusquisque enim in ea vocatione
qua vocatus est permanet. [61] They may also say that they wish to
persevere in the vocation to which they were called by God, and that
they did not enter religion to recognize two superiors, one a regular
and the other a secular, but rather one of their own profession--by
whom they would willingly allow themselves to be visited, censured,
and punished; but not by two distinct in profession. For if there
are two superiors who are unequal in profession, it is quite possible
that they will be at variance in the matters of orders and obedience;
and that such subordinate may be in doubt without the power to help
it lest obedience to one be an offense to the other. Consequently,
placed between two extremes, he will come to obey the more powerful
and to disobey his regular superior, who is the one from whom he can
fear less.

And one might doubt whether the superior could impose on those
who should be thus firm in their purpose the precept of obedience,
so that they should subject themselves as curas to an ordinary and
to tho choice of a governor. And if for the above reasons those who
are zealous for their rules should be lacking in the provinces and
ministries, the men who are less religious would become the mainstay
of the provinces and would administer the missions--men whom neither
ambition nor their slight attachment to the observance calls away [from
the order]. Consequently, such men coming in time to rule the provinces
and to possess the ministries in those islands, the end will be that
there will be no religion, observance, or examples in them to invite
the Indians, but only scandals by which they will stumble; for, as a
foolish people, they embrace what they see rather than what they hear.

Besides the above, the orders fear lest the governors and the
ordinaries will make use of that subjection to harass them, especially
if by any accident some collision should occur between them and the
authorities. For if the governor had the selection of the [religious
of the] villages in his control, who could prevent him fr