The reform which had swept away the worship of divine motherhood had also abolished the enforced celibacy of the priesthood; but the priest’s wife was given no position in the Church, and a tendency may be noted towards the secularisation of all women’s functions. Convents and nunneries were abolished, and no institutions which might specially assist women in the performance of their spiritual, educational or charitable duties were established in their place. There was, in fact, a deep jealousy of any influence which might disturb the authority and control which the individual husband exercised over his wife, and probably the seventeenth century Englishman was beginning to realise that nothing would be so subversive to this authority as the association of women together for religious purposes. If a recognised position was given to women in the Church, their lives must inevitably receive an orientation which would not necessarily be identical with their husband’s, thus creating a danger of conflicting loyalties. Naturally, therefore, women were excluded from any office, but it would be a mistake to suppose that their subordination to their husbands in religious matters was rigidly enforced throughout this period. Certainly in the first half of the century their freedom of thought in religion was usually taken for granted, and possibly amongst the Baptists, certainly amongst the Quakers, full spiritual equality was accorded to them. Women were universally admitted to the sacraments, and therefore recognised as being, in some sort, members of the Church, but this was consistent with the view of their position to which Milton’s well known lines in “Paradise Lost” give perfect expression, the ideal which, in all subsequent social and political changes, was destined to determine women’s position in Church and State:— “Whence true authoritie in men, though both Not equal, as their sex not equal seem’d, For contemplation hee and valour form’d For softness shee, and sweet attractive Grace, Hee for God only, shee for God in him: * * * * To whom thus Eve with perfect beauty adornd My Author and Disposer, what thou bidst Unargu’d I obey; so God ordains, God is thy Law, thou mine; to know no more Is woman’s happiest knowledge and her praise.”