MATRIMONIAL CREED

Being told one evening that I could not be quite a good girl, whilst I retained some particular notions concerning the behaviour of husbands and wives;—being told that I was intoxicated with false sentiments of dignity; that I was proud, rebellious, a little spit-fire, &c. I thought it behoved me to examine my own mind on these particulars, to distrust its rectitude, and endeavour to detect those erroneous principles and faulty passions, which could draw on me censures so severe from some of my best friends. Therefore, at the hour of retirement, when silence and solitude left my thoughts free, cool, and sedate, and my reason unperplexed by the ambiguities of expression, the mutual misconstructions and exaggerations, the warmth of self vindication, and the desire of converting others to our own way of thinking, which sometimes embarrass truth, and prevent conviction in argument,—I endeavoured to recollect and re-consider my own sentiments on the subject. And that I might do so with more certainty and regularity, I collected them, and set them down in as good order as I could, in the manner of a creed, which, considering the importance of the subject, will not I hope be thought a profanation of the form.—If the opinions here set down shall be found to vary from those I set out with, be it imputed, not to designed evasion, but to the gradual effects which the arguments I have since heard, and the reflections I have made, may have imperceptibly produced in a mind, which, however tenacious, is not disingenuous, and would have acknowledged those effects at the time, had it, at the time, been sensible of them.