Note 237 — San Agustin’s Letter on the Filipinos

99. Then is it possible that, even though they are Catholics and faithful sons of the Church, we must exalt to so lofty an estate men against whom there would be so many complaints if they became alférezes of a company in the regiment of Manila? Can the sacred habit of St. Peter, which we religious venerate as that of the greatest dignity, and to which we yield the most honorable place—which, as said the patriarch of Antiochia237 to the emperor of China, is the first rank and order of the Church—be obliged not to experience disgust at such low creatures? I do not know in what it [i.e., the proposal to ordain Indians] can consist, unless it be that in it is realized the vision that the said St. Peter had in Cesarea when the sheet was let down from heaven filled with toads and serpents, and a voice commanded him to eat without disgust—as is read in chapter x of the Acts of the Apostles. For although it signified the calling of heathendom, it must not be understood in moral things of the barbarous and mean nature of some peoples that compose that heathendom, in order to constitute the ecclesiastic hierarchy.238 When I come to discuss this matter, I find no end, and I find that we can only say: Domine adauge [nobis] fidem (Luke [x]vii, [5]).239