  Miller’s reference to the “monstrous Doctrine” of women preachers calls to mind the arguments of Protestant reformer John Knox (c. 1514–1572) a generation before. In his 1558 work, The First Blast of the Trumpet Against the Monstrous Regiment of Women, Knox urges his readers to rebel against female authority. He points out that it is repugnant to nature that the weak shall lead the strong, or that the foolish and mad shall govern the “sober of mind” (Knox 1558, 9). Nature informs us that women are physically frail, mentally feeble, and generally lacking in the necessary leadership virtues. Knox supports this view with reference to scriptural claims that it is a virtue for women to be submissive and subject to men. As part of the legacy of Eve’s transgression, he points out, the Bible states that man shall be lord and governor over woman (Genesis 3:16). He also observes that the apostle Paul (again, in Timothy and Corinthians) deprives women of “all power and authoritie, to speake, to reason, to interprete, or to teache, but principallie to rule or to judge in the assemblie of men” (Knox 1558, 16).