extreams are, in _Exceſſe_; to violate it before marriage; in defect, not to marry. In ripe years as ſoon as reaſon perſwades, and opportunity admits, Theſe extreams are equally removed from the mean: The exceſſe proceeds from _Luſt_, the defect from _Peeviſhneſſe_, _Pride_ and _Stupidity_. There is an old Proverb, That, _they that dy maids, muſt lead Apes in Hell_. An Ape is a ridiculous and unprofitable Beaſt, whoſe fleſh is not good for meat, nor its back for burden, nor is it commodious to keep an houſe: and perchance for the unprofitableneſſe of this Beaſt did this proverb come up: For surely nothing is more unprofitable in the Commonwealth of _Nature_, then they that dy old maids, becauſe they refuſe to be uſed to that end for which they were only made. The Ape bringeth forth her young, for the moſt part by twins; that which ſhe loves beſt, ſhe killeth by preſſing it too hard: so fooliſh maids ſoothing themſelves with a falſe conceit of _vertue_, in fond obſtinacie, live and die maids; and ſo not only kill in themſelves the _vertue_ of _Virginity_, and of a Vertue make it a Vice, but they also accuſe their parents in condemning marriage. If this application hold not touch, yet there may be an excellent one gathered from an Apes tender love to Conies in keeping them from the Weaſel and Ferret. From this ſimilitude of an Ape & an old Maid did the aforeſaid proverb firſt ariſe. But alas, there are ſome old Maids that are _Virgins_ much againſt their wills, and fain would change their _Virgin-life_ for a _Married_: ſuch if they never have had any offer of fit Huſbands, are in ſome ſort excuſable, and their willingneſſe, their deſire to marry, and their forbearance from all diſhoneſt, and unlawful copulation, may be a kind of inclination to _vertue_, although not _Vertue_ it ſelfe. This _Virtue_ of _Virginity_ (though it be ſmall and fruitleſſe) it is an extraordinary, and no common _Vertue_. All other _Vertues_ lodge in the _Will_ (it is the _Will_ that makes them _vertues_.) But it is the unwillingneſſe to keep it, the deſire to forſake it, that makes this a _vertue_. As in the naturall generation and formation made of the ſeed in the womb of a woman, the body is joynted and organized about the 28 day, and so it begins to be no more an _Embrion_, but capable as a matter prepared to its form to receive the ſoule, which faileth not to inſinuate and inneſt it ſelfe into the body about the fortieth day; about the third month it hath motion and ſenſe: Even ſo _Virginity_ is an _Embrion_, an unfaſhioned lump, till it attain to a certain time, which is about twelve years of age in women, fourteen in men, and then it beginneth to have the ſoule of _Love_ infuſed into it, and to become a _vertue_: There is alſo a certain limited time when it ceaſeth to be a _vertue_, which in men is about fourty, in women about thirty years of age: yea, the loſſe of ſo much time makes their _Virginity_ a _Vice_, were not their endeavour wholly bent, and their