ogists
for feminine ignorance gravely asserted and led others to believe
that the women of England "were too delicate to bear the fatigues of
acquiring knowledge," besides being by nature incapable of doing so,
for, said they, "the moisture of their brain rendered it impossible
for them to possess a solid judgment, that faculty of the mind
depending upon a dry temperature." But the unanswerable argument of
all was that death and sin had fallen upon the race of Adam solely
in consequence of the thirst which Eve had manifested for knowledge.
In the face of such contentions, it was not difficult to lead people
generally to accept the further conclusion as to the disastrous
consequences which would certainly come upon society when woman became
puffed up with her mental acquirements; the favorable opinion which
she would then have of herself would not harmonize with that obedience
to men for which she was created. Worthy of note is the fact that
these views extended in some circles to the arresting of the progress
of religious instruction, especially that of a public nature. Evelyn,
in his _Diary_, says that while the saints inherited the earth under
the Protectorate, it was his invariable custom to devote his Sunday
afternoons to the catechising and instruction of his family; but, he
remarks, these wholesome exercises "universally ceased in the parish
churches, so as people had no principles, and grew very ignorant of
even the common points of Christianity, all devotions being now placed
in hearing sermons and discourses of speculative and national things."

There was a sterner side to the religious movement in England than its
relation to matters intellectual or even moral. The Reformation under
Henry VIII. had added the names of certain women to those of the noble
army of martyrs of all the ages. To be false to conscience was to be
false to the very principles of their being, and both Catholic and
Protestant women became intensely strong in their convictions and
intolerant of those of others. The Roman Church offered up its
holocaust to the passions and prejudices of the leaders of the
Protestant movement, just as the Roman Church in turn exacted the
tribute of their lives from many adherents of Protestantism. Woman was
looked upon as inferior to man and less capable of responsible action,
but in meting out persecutions there was no distinction as to sex, the
weaker suffering equally with the stronger. The history of reli