Purity of a purified nature

..I beg the reader to find my method of procedure acceptable, and to excuse me if, in order to give a better understanding of the character of our savages, I have been forced to insert here many uncivilized and extravagant details, since one cannot convey complete knowledge of a foreign country or of how it is governed except by showing, along with the good, the evil and the imperfection to be found in it. Otherwise it would not be necessary for me to describe the manners of savages if there were nothing savage to be seen in them, but [on the contrary] polite and refined habits like [those of] nations civilized by religion and piety, or by magistrates and wise men who through their good laws might have given some shapeliness to the uncouth manners of these barbarous nations, for in them one can discern but little of the light of reason and the purity of a purified nature.

Gabriel Sagard (ca. 1614-ca.1636), translated by George M. Wrong, Sagard’s long journey to the country of the Hurons (Champlain Society, 1939).