She has heard of the rag of Rome, and thinks it a very
sluttish religion, and rails at the whore of Babylon for a very naughty
woman. She has left her virginity as a relick of popery, and marries in
her tribe without a ring. Her devotion at the church is much in the
turning up of her eye; and turning down the leaf in her book, when she
hears named chapter and verse. When she comes home, she commends the
sermon for the Scripture, and two hours. She loves preaching better than
praying, and of preachers, lecturers; and thinks the week day's exercise
far more edifying than the Sunday's. Her oftest gossipings are
sabbath-day's journeys, where (though an enemy to superstition), she
will go in pilgrimage five mile to a silenced minister, when there is a
better sermon in her own parish. She doubts of the virgin Mary's
salvation, and dares not saint her, but knows her own place in heaven as
perfectly as the pew she has a key to. She is so taken up with faith she
has no room for charity, and understands no good works but what are
wrought on the sampler. She accounts nothing vices but superstition and
an oath, and thinks adultery a less sin than to swear _by my truly._ She
rails at other women by the names of Jezebel and Delilah; and calls her
own daughters Rebecca and Abigail, and not Ann but Hannah. She suffers
them not to learn on the virginals, [56] because of their affinity with
organs, but is reconciled to the bells for the chimes' sake, since they
were reformed to the tune of a psalm.
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