isfied, when he expired in a poor
cabin of a natural death, though he was at that very time on the point of
carrying the faith into the kingdom of China: And it may be therefore
said, that he sacrificed not only his own glory, but even that of Jesus
Christ, to the good pleasure of God Almighty.

A man so submissive to the orders of heaven, could not possibly want
submission in regard of his superior, who was to him in the place of God.
He had for Father Ignatius, general of the Society of Jesus, a veneration
and reverence, mixed with tenderness, which surpass imagination. He
himself has expressed some part of his thoughts on that subject, and we
cannot read them without being edified. In one of his letters, which
begins in this manner, "My only dear Father, in the bowels of Jesus
Christ;" he says at the conclusion, "Father of my soul, for whom I have a
most profound respect, I write this to you upon my knees, as if you
were present, and that I beheld you with my eyes." It was his custom to
write to him in that posture; so high was the place which Ignatius held
within his heart.

"God is my witness, my dearest Father," says he in another letter, "how
much I wish to behold you in this life, that I might communicate to you
many matters, which cannot be remedied without your aid; for there is no
distance of places which can hinder me from obeying you. I conjure you,
my best Father, to have some little consideration of us who are in the
Indies, and who are your children. I conjure you, I say, to send hither
some holy man, whose fervour may excite our lazy faintness. I hope, for
the rest, that as you know the bottom of our souls, by an illumination
from heaven, you will not be wanting to supply us with the means of
awakening our languishing and drowsy virtue, and of inspiring us with the
love of true perfection." In another of his letters, which is thus
superscribed, "To Ignatius, my holy Father in Jesus Christ," he sends him
word, that the letter which he received from his holy charity, at his
return from Japan, had replenished him with joy; and that particularly he
was most tenderly affected with the last words of it: "I am all yours,
yours even to that degree, that it is impossible for me to forget you,
Ignatius." "When I had read those words," said he, "the tears came
flowing into my eyes, and gushing out of them; which makes me, that I
cannot forbear writing them, and recalling to my memory that sincere and
holy friends