; and one day, perhaps, for all he is
now nameless, he may be attainted of treason. Yet he has "determined to
obey God, notwithstanding that the world shall rage thereat." Finally,
he makes some excuse for the anonymous appearance of this first
instalment: it is his purpose thrice to blow the trumpet in this matter,
if God so permit; twice he intends to do it without name; but at the
last blast to take the odium upon himself, that all others may be
purged.

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 very 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. After having thus
exhausted Scripture, and formulated its teaching in the somewhat
blasphemous maxim that the man is placed above the woman, even as God
above the angels, he goes on triumphantly to adduce the testimonies of
Tertullian, Augustine, Ambrose, Basil, Chrysostom, and the Pandects; and
having gathered this little cloud of witnesses about him, like
pursuivants about a herald, he solemnly proclaims all reigning women to
be traitoresses and rebels against God; discharges all men thenceforward
from holding any office under suc