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From the commonplace book:

'Once when I asked a chieftain in a certain province if he was a Christian, he said “I am not yet quite one, but I am making a beginning”.

'I asked him what he knew of being Christian, and he said: “I know how to swear to God, and play cards a bit, and I am beginning to steal”.'

Fray Domingo de Santo Tomás,
Grammatica o arte de la lengua general de los Indios de los Reynos del Peru, ch. xxiii (1560)