464 A CHAPLAIN FOR THE COLONY,

and to embrace the Catholic doctrine; but as T am here under
your pormission, and in your family, Tam bound in justice to your
kindness, as well as in deceney and good manners, to be under
your government; and therefore T shall not, without your leave,
enter into any debates on the point of religion in which we may
not agree, further than you shall give me leave.”

T told him his carriage was so modest that T could not but
acknowledge it; that it was true we were such people as they
called heretics, but that he was not the first Catholic that T had
conversed with without falling into any inconveniences, or carrying
the questions into any height in debate; that he should not. find
himself the worse used for being of a different opinion from us, and
if we did not converse without any dislike on either side upon that
score, it should be his fault, not. ours.

He replied that he thought all our conversation might be easily
separated from disputes; that it was not his business to cap prin-
ciples with every man he discoursed with; and that he rather
desired me to converse with him as a gentleman than as a religieuse :
that if T would give him leave at any time to discourse upon
religious subjects, he would readily comply with it; and that then
he did not doubt but T would allow him also to defend his own
opinions as well as he could; but that, without my leave, he would
not break in upon me with any such thing,

Te told me, further, that he would not cease to do all that be-
came him in his office as a priest, as well as a private Christian,
to procure the good of the ship and the safety of all that was in
her; and though, perhaps, we would not join with him, and he
could not pray with us, he hoped he might pray for us, which he
would do upon all occasions. In this manner we conversed ; and
as he was of a most obliging, gentleman-like behaviour, so he was,
if T may be allowed to say so, a man of good sense, and, as T he-
lieve, of great learning.

He gave me a most diverting account of his life, and of the
many extraordinary events of it; of many adventures which had
befallen him in the few years that he had been abroad in the world;
and particularly, this was very remarkable, namely, that in the
voyage he was now engaged he had had the misfortune to be five