The women were easily made sensible of the meaning of the thing, and were very well satisfied with it, as indeed they had reason to be; so they 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 interpreter.

But the seriousness of his behaviour to them, and the scruple 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 no.

Indeed I was afraid his scruple 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 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.