r some of the
other causes above-mentioned, yet I am unwilling to believe that
there is in nature so monstrously incongruous a being as a _female_
infidel. The least reflection on the temper, the character, and the
education of women, makes the mind revolt with horror from an idea
so improbable and so unnatural.

"May I be allowed to observe that, in general, the minds of girls
seem more aptly prepared in their early youth for the reception of
serious impressions than those of the other sex, and that their less
exposed situations in more advanced life qualify them better for the
preservation of them! The daughters (of good parents I mean) are
often more carefully instructed in their religious duties than the
sons, and this from a variety of causes. They are not so soon sent
from under the paternal eye into the bustle of the world, and so
early exposed to the contagion of bad example: their hearts are
naturally more flexible, soft, and liable to any kind of impression
the forming hand may stamp on them; and, lastly, as they do not
receive the same classical education with boys, their feeble minds
are not obliged at once to receive and separate the precepts of
Christianity, and the documents of pagan philosophy. The necessity
of doing this perhaps somewhat weakens the serious impressions of
young men, at least till the understanding is formed; and confuses
their ideas of piety, by mixing them with so much heterogeneous
matter. They only casually read, or hear read, the Scriptures of
truth, while they are obliged to learn by heart, construe, and
repeat, the poetical fables of the less than human gods of the
ancients. And, as the excellent author of 'The Internal Evidence of
the Christian Religion' observes, 'Nothing has so much contributed
to corrupt the true spirit of the Christian institution, as that
partiality which we contract, in our earliest education, for the
manners of pagan antiquity.'

"Girls, therefore, who do _not_ contract this early partiality,
ought to have a clearer notion of their religious duties: they are
not obliged, at an age when the judgment is so weak, to distinguish
between the doctrines of Zeno, of Epicurus, and of Christ; and to
embarrass their minds with the various morals, which were taught in
the Porch, in the Academy, and on the Mount.

"It is presumed that these remarks cannot possibly be so
misunderstood, as to be construed into the least disrespect to
literature, or a want of the hig