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, or 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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