No Deeds of Darkness are conceal’d by Night, }
He sees Who dwells in everlasting Light,
And ev’ry Thought is open to His Sight.
APPENDIX.
The Reflector, who hopes Reflector is not bad English, (now Governor is happily of the Feminine Gender) guarded against Curiosity in vain: For a certain ingenuous Gentleman, as she is inform’d, had the Good-nature to own these Reflections, so far, as to affirm that he had the Original MS. in his Closet, a Proof she is not able to produce; and so to make himself responsible for all their Faults, for which, she returns him all due Acknowledgment. However, the Generality being of Opinion, that a Man would have had more Prudence and Manners than to have Publish’d such unseasonable Truths, or to have betray’d the Arcana Imperii of his Sex; she humbly confesses, that the Contrivance and Execution of this Design, which is unfortunately accus’d of being so destructive to the Government, (of the Men, I mean) is intirely her own. She neither advis’d with Friends, nor turn’d over antient or modern Authors, nor prudently submitted to the Correction of such as are, or such as think they are good Judges, but with an English Spirit and Genius, set out upon the Forlorn Hope, meaning no Hurt to any body, nor designing any thing but the publick Good, and to retrieve, if possible, the Native Liberty, the Rights and Privileges of the Subject.
Far be it from her to stir up Sedition of any sort: none can abhor it more; and she heartily wishes, that our Masters would pay their Civil and Ecclesiastical Governors the same Submission, which they themselves exact from their Domestick Subjects. Nor can she imagine how she any way undermines the Masculine Empire, or blows the Trumpet of Rebellion to the Moiety of Mankind. Is it by exhorting Women, not to expect to have their own Will in any thing, but to be intirely Submissive, when once they have made Choice of a Lord and Master, though he happen not to be so wise, so kind, or even so just a Governor as was expected? She did not, indeed, advise them to think his Folly Wisdom, nor his Brutality, that Love and Worship he promised in his Matrimonial Oath; for this required a Flight of Wit and Sense much above her poor Ability, and proper only to Masculine Understandings. However, she did not in any manner prompt them to Resist, or to Abdicate the Perjur’d Spouse, though the Laws of God, and the Land, make Special Provision for it, in a Case, wherein, as is to be fear’d, few Men can truly plead Not Guilty.
’Tis true, through want of Learning, and of that Superior Genius which Men, as Men, lay claim to, she was ignorant of the Natural Inferiority of our Sex, which our Masters lay down as a Self-evident and Fundamental Truth. She saw nothing in the Reason of Things, to make this either a Principle or a Conclusion, but much to the contrary; it being Sedition at least, if not Treason, to assert it in this Reign. For if by the Natural Superiority of their Sex, they mean, that every Man is by Nature superior to every Woman, which is the obvious Meaning, and that which must be stuck to if they would speak Sense, it would be a Sin in any Woman, to have Dominion over any Man, and the greatest Queen ought not to command, but to obey, her Footman: because no Municipal Laws can supersede or change the Law of Nature: So that if the Dominion of the Men be such, the Salique Law, as unjust as English Men have ever thought it, ought to take Place over all the Earth, and the most glorious Reigns in the English, Danish, Castilian, and other Annals, were wicked Violations of the Law of Nature!
If they mean that some Men are superior to some Women, this is no great Discovery; had they turn’d the Tables, they might have seen that some Women are superior to some Men. Or had they been pleased to remember their Oaths of Allegiance and Supremacy, they might have known, that One Woman is superior to All the Men in these Nations, or else they have sworn to very little Purpose. And it must not be suppos’d, that their Reason and Religion would suffer them to take Oaths, contrary to the Law of Nature and Reason of Things.