OCR Text |
Show 224 LIBERTY AND SLAVERY. consider their own light a surer guide than the word of God, are visible in the anarchical opinions about human governments, civil and ecclesiastical, and on the rights of women, which have found appropriate advocates in the abolition publications. Let these principles be carried out, and there is an end to all social subordination, to all security for life an~ property, to all guarantee for public or domestic virtue. If our women are to be emancipated from subjection to the law which God has imposed upon them, if they are to quit the retirement of domestic life, where they preside in stillness over the character and destiny of society ; if they are to come forth in the liberty of men, to be our agents, our public lecturers, our committee-men, our rulers; if, in studied insult to the authority of God, we are to renounce in the marriage contract all claim to obedience, we shall soon have a country over which the genius of Mary Wolstonecraft would delight to preside, but from which all order and all virtue would speedily be banished. 1'nere is no form of human excellence before which we bow with profounder deference than that which appears in a delicate woman, adorned with the inward graces and devoted ARGUMENT FROM THE SCRIPTURES. 225 to the peculiar duties of her sex; and U1ere is no deformity of human character from which we turn with deeper loathing than from a woman forgetful of her nature, and clamorotlS for the vocation and rights of men. It would not be fair to object to the abolitionists tho disgusting and disorganizing opinions of even some of their leading advocates and publications, did they not continue to patronize those publications, and were not these opinions the legitimate consequences of their own principles. 1'heir women do but apply their own method of dealing with Scripture to another case. This no inconsiderable portion of the party have candor enough to acknowledge, and are therefore prepared to abide the result." |