failed not to attend all together at my apartment next morning, where I
brought out my clergyman; and though he had not on a minister's gown,
after the manner of England, 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 not. Indeed, I was afraid his scruples would have
been carried so far as that he would not have married them at all; nay,
notwithstanding 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 a
state of sin; and that it was true that nothing but the consenting to
marry, or effectually separating them from one another, could now put an
end to it; but there was a difficulty in it, too, with respect to the
laws of Christian matrimony, which he was not fully satisfied about, 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 to endeavour to persuade the women to be baptized, or
to profess the name of Christ, whom they had, he doubted, heard nothing
of, and without which they could not be baptized. He told them he
doubted they were but indifferent Christians themselves; that they had
but little knowledge of God or of His ways, and, therefore, he could not
expect that they had said much to their wives on that head yet; but that
unless they would promise him to use their endeavou