to many sick persons who, as incurable and beyond
remedy, are discharged from the royal hospital--the physicians
directing them, if they wish to recover, to go to certain baths
about twelve leguas from the city. [39] They are assisted to do this,
that they may recover their health.

8. Every week when they hold their meeting and assembly they give
assistance to many persons who do not receive continued assistance,
and they also aid many who are on their way to Nueva Espana--discharged
ensigns, sergeants, and soldiers. These are assisted in proportion to
their rank, as their need and their service to your Majesty are known.

9. The Confraternity has also given aid outside of this city, by
sending to the provinces of Pintados much aid to the Portuguese,
of both the higher and the lower classes, who by the destruction of
Maluco and Ambueno by the Dutch have been obliged to come to these
regions with their families and households. Without this assistance
they would have suffered severer privations.

10. It has undertaken to provide persons to go [_i.e._, to the
scaffold] with those who suffer under the law, and to bury them;
and it takes up the dismembered bodies of those who have suffered,
and the bodies of the drowned, burying them in consecrated ground
with much care, and showing honor to their bodies and bones, thus
greatly edifying the natives.

11. It attends with the necessary secrecy to securing reconciliations
between persons at enmity--sometimes of husbands with their wives,
and sometimes between other persons; and thus the brethren bring to
an end many evils and prevent injuries. They likewise correct many
persons of vices of which they have secret knowledge, which without
doubt greatly redounds to the service of God our Lord.

12. It attends to the execution of many wills, which are entrusted to
it by persons who leave their property to be distributed for pious
works and for chaplaincies. Leaving the matter in the care of this
Confraternity, they feel certain that their trusts will be executed
forever. It is a great consolation to them to know that the execution
has been accepted by the Confraternity. In particular, the execution of
the wills of poor persons who leave heirs in Nueva Espana and Espana,
and in Yndia, is accepted by the Confraternity.

13. All of these works of charity are performed by the said
Confraternity from the alms which are received from the citizens, from
the brethren, and from per