CHAPTER 3

HOW THERE IS SOME KNOWLEDGEOF GOD AMONG THE INDIANS

First, although the gross darkness of unbelief has obscured the minds of those nations, in many ways the light of truth and reason works in them to some small degree; and so most of them acknowledge and confess a supreme Lord and Maker of all, whom the Peruvians called Viracocha, adding a very excellent name such as Pachacamac or Pachayachachic, which means the creator of heaven and earth, and Usapu, which means admirable, and other similar names. They worshiped him, and he was the chief god that they venerated, gazing heavenward. And the same belief exists, after their fashion, in the Mexicans and the Chinese today and in other heathen peoples. This is very similar to what is told in the Book of Acts of the Apostles, when Saint Paul was in Athens and saw an altar with the inscription "Ignoto Deo" to the unknown God, from which the Apostle took the subject of his preaching, telling them, "What therefore you worship without knowing it, that I preach to you.¹ And so, similarly, all those who preach the Gospel to the Indians today have little difficulty in persuading them that there is a supreme God and Lord of all, and that he is the God of the Christians and the true God. Yet it has greatly astonished me that even though they do have the knowledge that I mention, they have no word of their own with which to name God. For, if we try to find in the Indian languages any word corresponding to this one, God, as it is Deus in Latin and Theos in Greek, and El in Hebrew and in Arabic Allah, it cannot be found in the language of Cuzco, nor in the Mexican tongue. And so those who preach or write for the Indians use our Spanish word Dios, adjusting its pronunciation and accent to the properties of the Indian languages, which are very diverse. This shows what a weak and incomplete knowledge they have of God, for they do not even know how to name him except by using our word. But indeed they did have a sort of knowledge, and so they built a very splendid temple for him in Peru, calling it Pachacamac, which was the chief sanctuary of that realm. And as I have said, Pachacamac means the same as Creator, although they also performed their idolatries in this temple, worshiping the devil and representations of him; and they also made sacrifices and offerings to Viracocha, and that temple held supreme place among the temples that the Inca kings possessed. And the fact that they called the Spaniards viracochas arose from this, that they thought they were children of heaven and as it were divine, just as others attributed godhood to Paul and Barnabas, calling one Jupiter and the other Mercury and trying to offer them sacrifices as to gods. And likewise those other barbarians of Melita (which is Malta), observing that the viper did the Apostle no harm, called him a god .
It is therefore a truth that conforms to all sound reason that there must be a sovereign Lord and King of Heaven, which the heathen did not deny for all their idolatry and unbelief, as appears in Plato's philosophy in the Timaeus, in Aristotle's Metaphysics, and in the Asclepius of Trismegistus, as well as in the poetry of Homer and Virgil. So it is that preachers of the Gospel do not have much difficulty in affirming and persuading of the truth of a supreme God, however barbarous and bestial the nations to whom they preach. But it is extremely difficult for them to root out of their minds the idea that there is no other god or deity but only one, and that all other things have no power or being of their own, or operation of their own, than what is given and communicated to them by that supreme and only God and Lord. And it is exceedingly necessary to convince them of this in every way possible, completely rejecting their errors in worshiping more than one God, and even more particularly having as gods and attributing godhood and addressing pleas to other things that are not gods, for they can accomplish no more than what the true God, their Lord and Maker, allows them.

1. Acts 17:23