It is
only in hereditary monarchies that he will offer any defence
of the anomaly. "If rulers were to be chosen by lot or
suffrage, he would not that any women should stand in the
election, but men only." The law of succession of crowns was
a law to him, in the same sense as the law of evolution is a
law to Mr. Herbert Spencer; and the one and the other
counsels his readers, in a spirit suggestively alike, not to
kick against the pricks or seek to be more wise than He who
made them. (2) If God has put a female child into the direct
line of inheritance, it is God's affair. His strength will
be perfected in her weakness. He makes the Creator address
the objectors in this not very flattering vein:- "I, that
could make Daniel, a sucking babe, to judge better than the
wisest lawyers; a brute beast to reprehend the folly of a
prophet; and poor fishers to confound the great clerks of the
world - cannot I make a woman to be a good ruler over you?"
This is the last word of his reasoning. Although he was not
altogether without Puritanic leaven, shown particularly in
what he says of the incomes of Bishops, yet it was rather
loyalty to the old order of things than any generous belief
in the capacity of women, that raised up for them this
clerical champion. His courtly spirit contrasts singularly
with the rude, bracing republicanism of Knox.
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