Thus he ends the preface, and enters upon his argument with a
secondary title: "The First Blast to awake Women degenerate."
We are in the land of assertion without delay. That a woman
should bear rule, superiority, dominion or empire over any
realm, nation, or city, he tells us, is repugnant to nature,
contumely to God, and a subversion of good order. Women are
weak, frail, impatient, feeble, and foolish. God has denied
to woman wisdom to consider, or providence to foresee, what
is profitable to a commonwealth. Women have been ever
lightly esteemed; they have been denied the tutory of their
own sons, and subjected to the unquestionable sway of their
husbands; and surely it is irrational to give the greater
where the less has been withheld, and suffer a woman to reign
supreme over a great kingdom who would be allowed no
authority by her own fireside. He appeals to the Bible; but
though he makes much of the first transgression and certain
strong texts in Genesis and Paul's Epistles, he does not
appeal with entire success. The cases of Deborah and Huldah
can be brought into no sort of harmony with his thesis.
Indeed, I may say that, logically, he left his bones there;
and that it is but the phantom of an argument that he parades
thenceforward to the end. Well was it for Knox that he
succeeded no better; it is under this very ambiguity about
Deborah that we shall find him fain to creep for shelter
before he is done with the regiment of women.
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