e former agreement departed from us. So that our Company was now
reduced to two, viz. my Self and Stephen Rutland; whose inclination
and resolution was as stedfast as mine against Marriage. And we parted
not to the last, but came away together.

CHAP. VII.

A return to the rest of the English, with some further accounts of
them. And some further discourse of the Authors course of life.

[Confer together about the lawfulness of Marrying with the Native
Women.] Let us now make a Visit to the rest of our Country-men,
and see how they do. They reckoning themselves in for their Lives,
in order to their future settlement, were generally disposed to
Marry. Concerning which we have had many and sundry disputes among
ourselves; as particularly concerning the lawfulness of matching
with Heathens and Idolaters, and whether the Chingulays Marriages
were any better than living in Whoredome: there being no Christian
Priests to join them together, and it being allowed by their Laws to
change their Wives and take others as often as they pleased. But these
cases we solved for our own advantage after this manner, That we were
but Flesh and Blood, and that it is said, It is better to Marry than
to burn, and that as far as we could see, we were cut off from all
Marriages any where else, even for our Life time, and therefore that
we must marry with these or with none at all. And when the People in
Scripture were forbidden to take Wives of Strangers, it was then when
they might intermarry with their own People, and so no necessity lay
upon them. And that when they could not, there are examples in the Old
Testament upon Record, that they took Wives of the Daughters of the
Lands, wherein they dwelt. These reasons being urged, there was none
among us, that could object ought against them, especially if those
that were minded to marry Women here, did take them for their Wives
during their lives, as some of them say, they do: and most of the
Women they marry are such as do profess themselves to be Christians.

[He resolves upon a single life.] As for mine own part, however lawful
these Marriages might be, yet I judged it far more convenient for me
to abstain, and that it more redounded to my good, having always a
reviving hope in me, that my God had not forsaken me, but according to
his gracious promise to the Jews in the XXX Chapter of Deuteronomy,
and the beginning, would turn my Captivity and bring me into the
Land of my Father