and, if you do not think so, look at the progress of the natives.  I know very well that there is plenty of care about temporal things; and, as long as these present themselves, religious instruction is to cease—­or the Indians must support it, even if they never understand it So we all say that the Gospel is the principal thing, but our works show what it is that we care most about.  Ordinances, decrees, and provisions which speak in favor of it, we have in plenty; the fulfilment of them will come when there is nothing temporal to be looked after, which will be very late.  If your Lordship does not think so, ask what is going on in the island of Panay.  Of what do they take most account, of the galleys and ships which are being built there, or of the religious instruction which was to be preached there?  Because I have seen with what dislike your Lordship hears of what is going on there, I have ceased to inform you of it—­which I did, hoping that if you understood the situation, you would find means to improve it.  Letters and messengers from there have told me things which are enough to break one’s heart; but now I am hardening it, because I see that it is of no use for me to grieve over them.  This I say in reply to the statement in the preface to your Lordship’s letter, in which you say:  “If they would allow me to be bishop, I would maintain better order in my bishopric than there is, and the natives would be much better instructed and not so harassed.”  But where there are so many to order and so few to obey, he who leads this dance can ill guide it to the place where it ought to go.  For this reason many things are going so far astray, and they will go astray as long as he who has care of everything does not have the authority which he ought to have.  For how can I arrange for the religious instruction, or take away here or place there, if after I have ordered it someone says that he chooses not to abide by it, but to do what he thinks best?  Allowing, in general, that in moral matters there is a little improvement, let us come to the particular point which your Lordship treats of in your letter.  But, before considering it, I wish to warn your Lordship that concern for these things, and the arrangement of them, and deciding who is to be here and who is to be there, is my business—­not only because it belongs to my office, but because his Majesty particularly committed and entrusted it to me, recommending me to do it in communication with your Lordship; but the execution of it he leaves to me, as by right is proper.  I say this because I have heard that by virtue of some decree or other they are persuading your Lordship that religious can establish themselves without my consent in villages where they have never been.  In this they are misleading your Lordship, and they themselves are mistaken; for that decree on the other side—­which notifies the viceroy of Nueva Espana, which has never been used in this land, and which no governor has ever dared to use—­is previous to the Council