Into this dilemma have both enthusiasts and
cooler thinkers fallen, when they laboured to free men from the
wholesome restraints which a just conception of the character of God
imposes.
It is not impious thus to scan the attributes of the Almighty: in
fact, who can avoid it that exercises his faculties? For to love God
as the fountain of wisdom, goodness, and power, appears to be the only
worship useful to a being who wishes to acquire either virtue or
knowledge. A blind unsettled affection may, like human passions,
occupy the mind and warm the heart, whilst, to do justice, love mercy,
and walk humbly with our God, is forgotten. I shall pursue this
subject still further, when I consider religion in a light opposite to
that recommended by Dr. Gregory, who treats it as a matter of
sentiment or taste.
To return from this apparent digression. It were to be wished that
women would cherish an affection for their husbands, founded on the
same principle that devotion ought to rest upon. No other firm base is
there under heaven- for let them beware of the fallacious light of
sentiment; too often used as a softer phrase for sensuality. It
follows then, I think, that from their infancy women should either
be shut up like eastern princes, or educated in such a manner as to be
able to think and act for themselves.
Why do men halt between two opinions, and expect impossibilities?
Why do they expect virtue from a slave, from a being whom the
constitution of civil society has rendered weak, if not vicious?
Still I know that it will require a considerable length of time to
eradicate the firmly rooted prejudices which sensualists have planted;
it will also require some time to convince women that they act
contrary to their real interest on an enlarged scale, when they
cherish or affect weakness under the name of delicacy, and to convince
the world that the poisoned source of female vices and follies, if
it be necessary, in compliance with custom, to use synonymous terms in
a lax sense, has been the sensual homage paid to beauty:- to beauty of
features; for it has been shrewdly observed by a German writer, that a
pretty woman, as an object of desire, is generally allowed to be so by
men of all descriptions; whilst a fine woman, who inspires more
sublime emotions by displaying intellectual beauty, may be
overlooked or observed with indifference, by those men who find
their happiness in the gratification of their appetites.
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