Their expeditions were usually made in consequence of some requisition on the part of their mistresses, or to fulfil a vow voluntarily incurred in a moment of intoxication and excitement. The reply to these general objections has been in part anticipated. Christianity assigns to women their proper place in society, neither admitting of their being tyrannized over by despotic authority, nor impiously honoured by a ridiculous adulation. They are to be viewed as help meets, not, as slaves; to be respected and loved, but not deified. While the religion of Jesus raises them to great consideration in the scale of society, it imposes a salutary restraint upon human passions, and checks every approach to the assumption of an unnatural superiority. It bestows a rank which secures them from contempt or disregard, while it equally prevents a senseless adoration: so that its principles disallow the barbaric treatment of uncivilized nations and the follies of the chivalrous ages. In the different periods and places to which the objection refers, the conduct of mankind was marked with inconsistency. Greece and Rome exhibit ample specimens of this nature; and the time of chivalry afford illustrations equally remarkable. The knights of the order were not distinguished by fidelity to their wives, or by a concern for the education of their daughters: their devotion to the female sex was, in fact, without principle and without love; they fought, from vanity and fashion, for persons whom they had basely dishonoured and secretly despised; and while their flattery and folly were sufficiently discreditable to their own understandings and hearts, they tended in a deplorable degree to corrupt the principles of those whom they professed to value.