  Nevertheless, the charge of denigrating the female sex cannot be levelled at Margaret Fell herself. Feroli (2006, 149–50) highlights the fact that Fell’s arguments in favour of women’s preaching do not efface the significance of the female body. In Womens Speaking Justified, Fell supports her case for female spiritual authority by appealing to the Virgin Mary’s vital role in salvation history. By virtue of her maternal power, Fell emphasizes, Mary gave birth to the “Seed of the Woman”: “the holy Ghost came upon her, and the holy thing that was born of her, was called the Son of God”, and Christ was “made of a woman” (Fell 1667c, 12, 4). Here Fell upholds a positive conception of sexual difference, according to which the female body is integral (rather than irrelevant) to the bringing of Christ’s message. In addition, Fell also valorizes the women who spread the message of Christ’s resurrection. These women exhibit admirable character traits or virtues, such as love and loyalty to Christ: their hearts were “united and knit unto him in love”, and they “could not depart as the men did, but sat watching and waiting, and weeping about the Sepulchre” (7). The woman who pours ointment on Christ’s head also demonstrates that she “knew more of the secret Power and Wisdom of God, then his Disciples did” (5). In such instances, women are not required to transcend or efface their natural womanhood in order to be admirable, and they are not mere vessels for the message of Christ—they have their virtues regardless, as natural women. Hence Feroli says that Fell’s text “not only affirms the theological point that women may speak in the church but also attempts to change general perceptions of women’s abilities” (Feroli 2006, 151). Her text challenges negative stereotypes of women as mentally and morally inferior to men.