ABSTRACT
Norris "Discourse Concerning The Measure of Divine Love", in Practical Discourses, he adduces Nicolas Malebranche's theory of occasionalism, according to which God, and not His creation, is directly responsible for all human sensation and perception, as philosophical justification for the theological admonition to love Him only. We also need schooling, a point Mary Astell stressed in her first and most ambitious pedagogical work, A Serious Proposal to the Ladies, Part I. Women, flighty, fashion-conscious, romance-reading, husband-hunting women were, of course, her particular concern. Given the fact that Astell's most sustained educational works rest firmly on sacred ground, it is not surprising that in arguably her most religious work, Astell is still interested in education. Indeed, if we are to believe Astell, Letters Concerning the Love of God, a collection of the correspondence between the well-known Christian Platonist John Norris and herself, only exists in printed form because Astell so desperately wished to teach.
