Apparently my professors saved the best for last.

I know I'm repeating myself, but Mary Astell's A Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694) was just so good. It's the most marked-up piece of assigned reading that I've notated this semester; I wanted to underline the entire thing.

Whereas she whose reason is suffered to display itself, to inquire into the grounds and motives of religion, to make a disquisition of its graces, and [to] search out its hidden beauties; who is a Christian out of choice, not in conformity to those about her; and cleaves to piety because 'tis her wisdom, her interest, her joy, not because she has been accustomed to it; she who is not only eminently and unmoveably good, but able to give a reason why she is so; is too firm and stable to be moved by the pitiful allurements of sin . . . Doubtless a truly Christian life requires a clear understanding as well as regular affections . . . And what is the reason that we sometimes see persons falling off from their piety, but because 'twas their affections, not their judgment, that inclined them to be religious? Reason and truth are firm and immutable . . . For the affections are various and changeable . . . Such persons are always in extremes . . . there is no order and beauty in their lives . . . Having more heat than light, their zeal outruns their knowledge, and instead of representing piety as it is in itself, the most lovely and inviting thing imaginable, they expose it to the contempt and ridicule of the censorious world.