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This witness knows that the said houses and village of the natives, as has been said, are also near the Parian of the Japonese, a pernicious people, who, like the Sangleys, do great harm through practice of the infamous sin; and they are a more restless and warlike people than the said Sangleys.
This was to Anger a favourable effect of God's providence; for the same hand which drives the guilty to the precipice, sometimes preserves them from falling into it, and pulls them back, after a miraculous manner. The Japonese, very happily for himself, met there Alvarez Vaz, just ready to set sail for Malacca.
The process of the saint's canonization makes mention of this miracle; and Father Antonio Quadros, who travelled to Japan four years after Father Xavier, writes it to Father Diego Moron, provincial of Portugal, These are his words: "A Japonese informed me, that he had seen three miracles wrought by Father Xavier in his country.
A Japonese, whose name was Anger, came with these vessels, expressly to see Xavier. He was about thirty-five years of age, rich, nobly born, and one whose life had been sufficiently libertine.
A woman would sometimes challenge them to a disputation; and urge them with such home and pressing arguments, that the more they endeavoured to get loose, the more they were entangled: For the Father, being made privy to the secrets of every sect, furnished the new proselytes with weapons to vanquish the Bonzas, by reducing them to manifest contradictions; which, among the Japonese, is the greatest infamy that can happen to a man of letters.
The tablet was very curious, and Xavier had given it to this Japonese, that he might shew it as occasion offered. The sight alone of this excellent painting wrought so much upon the king, that, being touched with thoughts of piety and reverence, he fell on his knees, with all his courtiers, to honour the persons therein represented, which seemed to him to have an air that was more than human.
He wrote also, by the same conveyance, to Father Francis Perez, superior of the Jesuits at Malacca, and commanded all of them to provide refreshments for the Japonese, who came along with him. When it was known in the city that Xavier was coming, the joy was so general, that it almost blotted out the remembrance of all they had suffered in the war.
Having also observed, that his ragged habit had shocked the Japonese, who judge by the outside of the man, and who hardly vouchsafe to hear a man ill clothed, he made himself a new garment, handsome enough, of those alms which the Portuguese had bestowed on him; being verily persuaded, that an apostolic man ought to make himself all to all, and that, to gain over worldly men, it was sometimes necessary to conform himself a little to their weakness.
They could not but be astonished, that he and his companions were come from another world, and had passed through so many stormy seas, not out of an avaricious design of enriching themselves with the gold of Japan, but only to teach the Japonese the true way of eternal life.
He had caused divers copies of his catechism to be taken for the use of the faithful Having augmented it by a more ample exposition of the creed, and added sundry spiritual instructions, with the life of our Saviour, which he entirely translated, he caused it to be printed in Japonese characters, that it might be spread through all the nation.
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