They consider also too frequently the laws of religion as barbarous restraints, and which their new notions of civilized refinement may relax at will.

And they do not hesitate, in consequence, to give a colour to some fashionable vices, which no christian painter would admit into any composition, which was his own.
To this it may be added, that, believing their own knowledge to be supreme, and their own system of morality to be the only enlightened one, they fall often into scepticism, and pass easily from thence to infidelity.

Foreign novels, however, more than our own, have probably contributed to the production of this latter effect.
These then are frequently the evils, and those which the Quakers insist upon, where persons devote their spare-time to the reading of novels, but more particularly among females, who, on account of the greater delicacy of their constitutions, are the more susceptible of such impressions.

These effects the Quakers consider as particularly frightful, when they fall upon this sex.

For an affectation of knowledge, or a forwardness of character, seems to be much more disgusting among women than among men.