fell
immediately into tears, and told us he had said something to her of all
those things, but that he was himself so wicked a creature, and his own
conscience so reproached him with his horrid, ungodly life, that he
trembled at the apprehensions, that her knowledge of him should lessen
the attention she should give to those things, and make her rather
contemn religion than receive it: but he was assured, he said, that her
mind was so disposed to receive due impressions of all those things,
that, if I would but discourse with her, she would make it appear to my
satisfaction that my labour would not be lost upon her.

Accordingly I called her in, and placing myself as interpreter between
my religious priest and the woman, I entreated him to begin with her.
But sure such a sermon was never preached by a popish priest in these
latter ages of the world: and, as I told him, I thought he had all the
zeal, all the knowledge, all the sincerity of a Christian, without the
errors of a Roman Catholic; and that I took him to be such a clergyman
as the Roman bishops were before the church of Rome assumed spiritual
sovereignty over the consciences of men.

In a word, he brought the poor woman to embrace the knowledge of Christ,
and of redemption by him, not with wonder and astonishment only, as she
did the first notions of a God, but with joy and faith, with an
affection, and a surprising degree of understanding, scarce to be
imagined, much less to be expressed; and at her own request she
was baptized.

When he was preparing to baptize her, I entreated him that he would
perform that office with some caution, that the man might not perceive
he was of the Roman church, if possible; because of other ill
consequences which might attend a difference among us in that very
religion which we were instructing the other in. He told me, that as he
had no consecrated chapel, nor proper things for the office, I should
see he would do it in a manner that I should not know by it that he was
a Roman Catholic himself it I had not known it before, and so he did;
for saying only some words over to himself in Latin, which I could not
understand, he poured a whole dishfull of water upon the woman's head,
pronouncing in French very loud _Mary_ (which was the name her husband
desired me to give her, for I was her godfather,) _I baptize thee in
the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost_; so that
none could know any thing by it what r