, 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 different 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 Christian matrimony, which he was not fully satisfied about,
viz. 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 they had,
he doubted, heard nothing of, and without which they could not
be baptized.

He told me he doubted they were but indifferent Christians themselves;
that they had but little knowledge of God or 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 endeavours with
their wives to persuade them to become Christians, and would as well as
they could instruct them in the knowledge and belief of God that made
them, and to worship Jesus Christ that redeemed them, he could not marry
them; for he would have no hand in joining Christians with savages; nor
was it consistent with the principles of the Christian religion, and was
indeed expressly forbidden in God's law.

They heard all this very attentively, and I delivered it very faithfully
to them from his mouth, as near his own words as I could, only sometimes
adding something of my own, to convince them how just it was, and how I
was of his mind: and I always very faithfully distinguished between what
I said from myself and what were the clergyman's words. They told me it
was very true what the gentleman had said, that they were but very
indifferent Christians themselves, and that they had never talked to
their wives about religion.--"Lord, Sir," says Will Atkins, "how should
we teach them religion? Why, we know nothing oursel