ABSTRACT

[118/1] We Catholics owe our Lord so much for His mercy in granting us the true knowledge of His sacred evangelical faith that this boon alone should prevent us from offending Him and make us serve Him all our lives, thus recognizing with due gratitude His grace in calling us and thereby meriting being chosen [118/2] by Him, these two divine interventions saving us from the eternal pains to which the wretched idolaters are condemned, owing to their ignorance of the real faith. For since they lack these they also lack the merit of being God’s chosen, and hence in their sin they lose that inestimable reward, to receive which the human race was rescued by the divine Redeemer from the power of the Devil. Though yet subject to his infernal dominion, as followers of his deceitful and false doctrine, they nevertheless do so with so much integrity, [119/1] purity and perfection in their own faith which, erroneous as it is in the eyes of those like us who profess the true faith, yet possesses such numerous moral virtues that they may serve as examples and a stimulus to many Christians. This any one can see for himself who penetrates the vast provinces of greater Asia as do the Missionary Brethren, Augustinians, Dominicans, Franciscans and Jesuits. Even to me, unworthy worker in so glorious a field, did God our Lord, in His infinite mercy, grant power to twice spend eleven years in preaching the Gospel. 1 In this time I visited several Empires and various Kingdoms, suffering many hardships, imprisonments and captivities, some of which will be described in this history. Showing places mentioned by Manrique. Names thus () not now extant but given on early maps—sites being approximate. https://s3-euw1-ap-pe-df-pch-content-public-p.s3.eu-west-1.amazonaws.com/9781315549699/625e4a7f-db2a-4e0a-b20f-427aa93283d1/content/pg233_1_OB.tif" xmlns:xlink="https://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"/>