Page:A Biographical Dictionary of the Celebrated Women of Every Age and Country (1804).djvu/582

568 qualified for the service of their country, viz. to b« executors of the law, and law-makers; both of which it belonging to this rank of Englishmen to be, some insight into the law which they are to see executed, and into that constitution which they are to support, cannot but be necessary to their well discharging their trusts: nor will this knowledge be sufficiently serviceable to the ends herein proposed, without some acquaintance likewise with history, politics, and morals.

"But, whether we farther look upon such men as having immortal souls, which shall be for ever happy or miserable as they comply with the terms which their Maker has proposed to them; or whether we regard them as protestants, whose birthright it is, not blindly to believe, but to examine their religion; or consider them only as men, whose ample fortunes allow them leisure for so important a study; they are, without doubt, obliged to understand the religion they profess.

"It is an undeniable truth, that a lady who is able to give an account of her faith, and to defend her religion against the attacks of the cavilling wits of the age, or the abuses of the obtruders of vain opinions; who is capable of instructing her children in the reasonableness of the Christian religion, and of laying in them the foundations of a solid virtue; that a lady, I say, no more knowing than this demands, can hardly escape being called learned by the men of our days; and, in consequence thereof, becoming a subject of ridicule to one part of them, and of aversion to the other; with but a few exceptions of some virtuous and rational persons. And is not the incurring the general dislike, one of the strongest discouragements that we can have to any thing?"

As Lady Masham herself owed much to the care of