and there are three things, which, if I am right, must stand in the
way of God’s blessing upon your endeavours here, and which I should
rejoice, for your sake and their own, to see removed. And, sir, I
promise myself that you will fully agree with me in them all, as
soon as I name them; especially because I shall convince you, that
every one of them may, with great ease, and very much to your
satisfaction, be remedied. First, sir,” says he, “you have here
four Englishmen, who have fetched women from among the savages, and
have taken them as their wives, and have had many children by them
all, and yet are not married to them after any stated legal manner,
as the laws of God and man require. To this, sir, I know, you will
object that there was no clergyman or priest of any kind to perform
the ceremony; nor any pen and ink, or paper, to write down a
contract of marriage, and have it signed between them. And I know
also, sir, what the Spaniard governor has told you, I mean of the
agreement that he obliged them to make when they took those women,
viz. that they should choose them out by consent, and keep
separately to them; which, by the way, is nothing of a marriage, no
agreement with the women as wives, but only an agreement among
themselves, to keep them from quarrelling. But, sir, the essence
of the sacrament of matrimony” (so he called it, being a Roman)
“consists not only in the mutual consent of the parties to take one
another as man and wife, but in the formal and legal obligation
that there is in the contract to compel the man and woman, at all
times, to own and acknowledge each other; obliging the man to
abstain from all other women, to engage in no other contract while
these subsist; and, on all occasions, as ability allows, to provide
honestly for them and their children; and to oblige the women to
the same or like conditions, on their side. Now, sir,” says he,
“these men may, when they please, or when occasion presents,
abandon these women, disown their children, leave them to perish,
and take other women, and marry them while these are living;” and
here he added, with some warmth, “How, sir, is God honoured in this
unlawful liberty? And how shall a blessing succeed your endeavours
in this place, however good in themselves, and however sincere in
your design, while these men, who at present are your subjects,
under your absolute government and dominion, are allowed by you to
live in open adultery?”
I confess I was struck with the thing itself, but much more with
the convincing arguments he supported it with; but I thought to
have got off my young priest by telling him that all that part was
done when I was not there: and that they had lived so many years
with them now, that if it was adultery, it was past remedy; nothing
could be done in it now.
“Sir,” says he, “asking your pardon for such freedom, you are right
in this, that, it being done in your absence, you could not be
charged with that part of the crime; but, I beseech you, flatter
not yourself that you are not, therefore, under an obligation to do
your utmost now to put an end to it. You should legally and
effectually marry them; and as, sir, my way of marrying may not be
easy to reconcile them to, though it will be effectual, even by
your own laws, so your way may be as well before God, and as valid
among men. I mean by a written contract signed by both man and
woman, and by all the witnesses present, which all the laws of
Europe would decree to be valid.”
I was amazed to see so much true piety, and so much sincerity of
zeal, besides the unusual impartiality in his discourse as to his
own party or church, and such true warmth for preserving people
that he had no knowledge of or relation to from transgressing the
laws of God. But recollecting what he had said of marrying them by