Page:A New Survey of the West Indies or The English American his Travel by Sea and Land.djvu/33

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Chap. III.
of the West-Indies.
17

his Patents (and with them peradventure a little Wedge of Gold, a Box of Pearls, some Rubies or Diamonds, a Chest of Cochinel, or Sugar, with some Boxes of curious Chocolet of some Feather Works of Mechoacan, some small fruits of his great pains and labour) to the Pope; who for his first reward gives him his Toe and Pantofle co kiss, seconding this honour with a joyful countenance to behold an Apostle, judging him worthy of the best of the Indian Wealth, and his soul peradventure fit for the Title of a Saint; This complacency in the gift and the giver, breeds immediately a motus proprius in his Holiness to grant a Bull with a degree of the Popes Commissary, wherein this poor Mendicant Frier is inabled to run over all the Cloisters or his Profession in Spain to gather up his thirty or forty young Preachers. Who for their better encouragement are at their first lifting by the Popes Authority absolved a culpa & a pœna, from all sin, and from their.Purgatory and Hell due unto it, by a plenary Indulgence. And whosoever shall oppose, or any way discourage this Popes Commissary, or those that are or would be lifted by him, are ipso facto Excommunicated with an Anathem reserved only to this Commissary or his Holiness himself. O what is it to see? when such a Commissary's coming is known, how the young Birds, that as in Cages are shut up within the walls of a Cloisters leap and cherish themselves with hopes of Liberty? What is it to see disordered Friers, who for their misdemeanours, and leaping over their Cloister walls in the night to find out their wanton Harlots, have been imprisoned, now rejoyce at the coming of a Popes Commissary, and plenary Indulgence, freeing them from sins past, and fitting them for the Converersion of souls, though their own be not averted, from their Harlot, nor as yet truly and unfainedly Converted to the love of God? True it is, I have known some that have written their names in the List of Indian Missionaries, men of

Sober Life and Conversation, moved only with a blind Zeal of encreasing the Popish Religion: yet I dare say and confidently Print this truth without wronging the Church of Rome that of thirty or forty which in such occassons are commonly transported to the Indias the three parts of them are Friers

of