OF AN HOLY WAR. 141 



done no mischief at all actually, yet if there shall 

 be a congregation and consent of people, that shall 

 hold all things to be lawful, not according to any 

 certain laws or rules, but according to the secret 

 and variable motions and instincts of the spirit ; this 

 is indeed no nation, no people, no seigniory, that 

 God doth know ; any nation that is civil and po 

 liced, may, if they will not be reduced, cut them off 

 from the face of the earth. Now let me put a 

 feigned case, and yet antiquity makes it doubtful 

 whether it were fiction or history, of a land of Ama 

 zons, where the whole government public and pri 

 vate, yea, the militia itself, was in the hands of 

 women. I demand, is not such a preposterous go 

 vernment, against the first order of nature, for 

 women to rule over men, in itself void, and to be 

 suppressed ? I speak not of the reign of women, 

 for that is supplied by counsel, and subordinate ma 

 gistrates masculine, but where the regiment of state 

 justice, families, is all managed by women. And 

 yet this last case differeth from the other before, 

 because in the rest there is terror of danger, but 

 in this there is only error of nature. Neither 

 should I make any great difficulty to affirm the 

 same of the sultanry of the Mamalukes ; where 

 slaves, and none but slaves, bought for money, 

 and of unknown descent, reigned over families 

 of freemen. And much like were the case, if you 

 suppose a nation, where the custom were, that 

 after full age the sons should expulse their fathers 



