In other words, like
people in the common concerns of life, they do homage to power, and
cringe under the foot that can crush them. Rational religion, on the
contrary, is a submission to the will of a being so perfectly wise,
that all he wills must be directed by the proper motive- must be
reasonable.
And, if thus we respect God, can we give credit to the mysterious
insinuations, which insult his laws? can we believe, though it
should stare us in the face, that he would work a miracle to authorize
confusion by sanctioning an error? Yet we must either allow these
impious conclusions, or treat with contempt every promise to restore
health to a diseased body by supernatural means, or to foretell the
incidents that can only be foreseen by God.
SECT. II.
Another instance of that feminine weakness of character, often
produced by a confined education, is a romantic twist of the mind,
which has been very properly termed sentimental.
Women subjected by ignorance to their sensations, and only taught to
look for happiness in love, refine on sensual feelings, and adopt
metaphysical notions respecting that passion, which lead them
shamefully to neglect the duties of life, and frequently in the
midst of these sublime refinements they plump into actual vice.
These are the women who are amused by the reveries of the stupid
novelists, who, knowing little of human nature, work up stale tales,
and describe meretricious scenes, all retailed in a sentimental
jargon, which equally tend to corrupt the taste, and draw the heart
aside from its daily duties.
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