Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/581

Rh Masham, and the bad consequences, as she thought, represented in a strong light.

Whether Mr. Norris ever attempted to support what he had advanced, is uncertain; but Mrs. Astell, who had written on the same subject, still continued to maintain the same opinion, and replied to Lady Masham and Mr. Locke, in her book of The Christian Religion, as professed by a Daughter of the Church of England, to which we refer our reader; from perusal of which, and Lady Masham's treatise, he will, probably, conceive a very high opinion of the understanding and piety of each.

About the year 1700, Lady Masham published "Occasional Thoughts in reference to a Virtuous or Christian Life. 12mo. She complains in it much of the great neglect of religious duties, for want of being better acquainted with the fundamentals of religion. She reprehends persons of quality for permitting their daughters to pass that part of their youth, in which the mind is most ductile and susceptible of good impressions, in a ridiculous circle of diversions, which is generally thought the proper business of young ladies; and which so engrosses them, that they can find no spare hours to improve themselves as reasonable creatures; or as is requisite to their discharging well their present or future duties; and they so little know why they should look upon the Scriptures as the word of God, that too often they are easily persuaded out of the reverence due to them as being so; insomuch, that the generality are so entirely ignorant of the articles of their faith, that they can give no other reason for believing them, than that they are commanded to do so!

She says further, there is not a commoner complaint in every county, than of the want of gentlemen qualified