Now that thus much knowledge requires neither Learned Education, or great Study, to the attaining of it, appears in that the first Christians were mean and illiterate People; to which part of Mankind the Gospel may rather be thought to have had a more especial regard than that they are any way excluded from the Benefits thereof by incapacity in them to receive it.  In the Apostles Days there were not many Wise who were call’d, and he tells us that after that the World by Wisdom knew not God:  it pleased God by the foolishness of Preaching to save them that believe, and tho’ to the perfect the same Apostle says, he did Preach Wisdom, yet it was the simplicity and plainness of the Christian Religion that made it to the Jews a stumbling block, and to the Greeks foolishness.  From whence, we see that all Theorems too abstruse for Vulgar Apprehensions, which Christianity is believ’d to Teach, however Divine Truths, are yet no part of the Doctrine of Salvation.  There is not therefore this pretence to impose upon any one the belief of any thing which they do not find to be reveal’d in Scripture; the doing of which, has not only caus’d deplorable dissentions among Christians, but also been an occasion to multitudes of well meaning People of having so confus’d and unsatisfactory conceptions and apprehensions concerning the Christian Religion as tho’ perhaps not absolutely, or immediately prejudicial to their Salvation, yet are so to their seeing clearly that Christianity is a rational Religion; without which few will be very secure from the infection of Scepticism, or Infidelity, where those are become fashionable, and prevailing.  A danger to which many Women are no less expos’d than Men, and oftentimes, more so.  Whence it is but needful that they should so well understand their Religion as to be Christians upon the Convictions of their Reason; which is indeed no more than one would think it became every Christian, as a rational Creature, to be; were this not requisite in regard of Scepticism, and Infidelity, as to some it is not; there being, no doubt, many a Country Gentlewoman who has never in her Life heard Question’d, or once imagined that any one in their Wits could Question the Articles of her Faith; which yet she her self knows not why she believes.

From the too Notorious Truth of what has been said in reference to the little that Women know concerning Religion, it must be granted that the generality of them are shamefully Ignorant herein.  As for other Science, it is believ’d so improper for, and is indeed so little allow’d them, that it is not to be expected from them:  but the cause of this is only the Ignorance of Men.