The warnings against women with which he plied his son give the book a misogynist character, and it was ridiculed by John Heydon in his "Advice to a Daughter, in opposition to Advice to a Son", 1658. A defence of Osborne appeared in "Advice to Balaam's Ass", by Thomas Pecke, whom Heydon castigated in a second edition of his "Advice to a Daughter", 1659. In Osborne's day his "Advice to a Son" found admirers among the young scholars at Oxford, but the clergy detected atheism in its vague references to religion, and denounced its evil influence. On 27 July 1658 the vice-chancellor, John Conant, accordingly summoned the Oxford booksellers before him, and told them sell no more copies of Osborne's book; but this direction caused the "Advice", according to Anthony à Wood, to sell far more copies.