Mary Astell`s writing reveals the existence of a remarkable modern feminism before the liberal feminism we term the first wave that celebrates the free-born woman on equal terms with the freeborn man. The Christian Religion, As professed by a Daughter of the Church of England (1705), Astell`s greatest work, proclaims an ascetic feminism that decries the liberal pieties and the concomitant commitment to such rights as life, liberty, and happiness-all correlates of worldly estate or property. As tell allows us to reinvestigate the valences of each term of the newly holy trinity to see how difficult it must have been for a thinking and religious modern woman of her time to endorse what no one could then know would become the predominant model for modern freedom. Some may hesitate to call As tell a feminist, but no other term will suffice for one who so strongly voiced her objections to customary rights that debased the equality of women and who so strongly affirmed avision in which women were the equals of men in their ability to rise above the narrow constraints of property in defining the principle values of human life.