Genre:

News-Commentary, Drollery

Subjects:

Mathematics, Religion, Religious Authority, Gender

    Comments on a Pall Mall Gazette report concerning Richard Wilkins, a clergyman at Magdalene College, Cambridge, who calculated, on the basis of the sacramental confession, that 'there will be twelve women to one man who would enter heaven'. Believes that Wilkins has invented a new branch of mathematics, but argues that calculations based on the sacramental confession are hardly trustworthy because the confessional is a 'Protestant Counterfeit of a Roman Catholic institution', and that the penitents are 'mostly of a sex especially tenacious of their own secrets'. Suggests that the unreliability of the calculation stems from the fact that 'of those who credited Wilkins with the character of a Catholic Priest', women outnumbered men by twelve to one. Regards Wilkins as the inventor of the 'Theological Calculus'.