  This anti-learning bent distances Fell from later religious feminists, such as Mary Astell, who called for the higher education of women in her Serious Proposal to the Ladies (1694). For Astell, women can attain wisdom and virtue only if they are taught to improve their natural reasoning skills through the study of religion and philosophy. In her plea for a female academy, she cites the works of René Descartes, Antoine Arnauld, Pierre Nicole, and Henry More, as exemplary philosophical-theological texts. For Fell, however, religious worship is about the individual directing herself to the light and keeping to it; it does not consist in a dependence or reliance upon others’ words and meanings. Such worship can be performed by anyone, anywhere, at any time.