THE PRIEST AND THE COLONISTS. 477

The women were easily made sensible of the meaning of the
thing, and were very well satisfied with it, as indeed they had
reason to be. So they failed not to attend all together at my apart-
ment the next morning, where I brought out my clergyman; and
though he had not on a minister’s gown, after the manner of Eng-
land, or the habit of a priest, after the manner of France, yet
having a black vest something like a cassock, with a sash round it,
he did not look very unlike a minister; and as for his language, I
was his interpreter.

But the seriousness of his behaviour to them, and the scruples
he made of marrying the women because they were not baptized
and professed Christians, gave them an exceeding reverence for his
person; and there was no need after that to inquire whether he
was a clergyman or no.

Indeed, I was afraid his scruple would have been carried so far
as that he would not have married them at all; nay, notwithstand-
ing all I was able to say to him, he resisted me, though modestly,
yet very steadily, and at last refused absolutely to marry them,
unless he had first talked with the men and the women too;
and though at first I was a little backward to it, yet at last I
agreed to it with a good will, perceiving the sincerity of his
design.

When he came to them, he let them know that I had acquainted
him with their circumstances, and with the present design: that
he was very willing to perform that part of his function, and
marry them as I had desired; but that before he could do it, he
must take the liberty to talk with them. He told them, that in
the sight of all indifferent men, and in the sense of the laws of
society, they had lived all this while in an open adultery; and that
it was true that nothing but the consenting to marry, or effectually
separating them from one another now, could put an end to it; but ~
there was a difficulty in it, too, with respect to the laws of Chris-
tian matrimony, which he was not fully satisfied about, namely,
that of marrying one that is a professed Christian to a savage, an
idolater, and a heathen, one that is not baptized; and yet that he _
did not see that there was time left for it to endeavour to persuade
the women to be baptized, or to profess the name of Christ, whom