Holy living in which are described the means and instruments of obtaining every virute, and the remedies against every vice, and considerations serving to the resisting all temptations : together with prayers containing the whole duty of a Christian, and the parts of devotion occasians [sic], and furnished for all necessities / by Jer. Taylor.

Acta of Virginal Chastity.

1. Virgins must remember that the Virgi∣nity of the body is only excellent in order to the purity of the soul: who therefore must consider that since they are in some measure in a condicion like that of Angels, it is their duty to spend much of their time in Angeli∣cal imployment: for in the same degree that Virgins live more spiritually then other per∣sons, in the same degree is their Virginity a more excellent state: But else it is no better then that of involuntary or constrained Eu∣nuchs; a misery and trouble, or else a meer privation, as much without excellency as without mixture.

2. Virgins must contend for a singular modesty; whose first part must be an igno∣rance in the distinction of sexes, or their pro∣per instruments: or if they accidentally be instructe in that, it must be supplied with an inadvertency or neglect of all thoughts and remembrances of such difference: and the following parts of it, must be pious and chast thoughts, holy language and modest car∣riage.

3. Virgins must be retired and unpublick: for all freedome and loosness of society is a violence done to virginity; not in its natural, but in its moral capacity: that is, it looses part of its severity, strictness and opportu∣nity of advantages by publishing that per∣son, whose work is religion, whose company is Angels whose thoughts must dwell in hea∣ven, and separate from all mixtures of the world.

4. Virgins have a peculiar obligation to charity: for this is the virginity of the soul; as purity, integrity, and separation is of the body, which doctrine we are taught by S. Pe∣ter:* 1.1 Seeing ye have purified your soules in obeying the truth through the Spirit unto un∣feigned love of the brethren: see that ye love one another with a pure heart fervently. For a Virgin that consecrates her body to God, and pollutes her spirit with rage, or impati∣ence, or inordinate anger, gives him what he most hates, a most foul and defiled soul.

5. These Rules are necessary for Virgins that offer that state to God, and mean not to enter into the state of marriage: for they that only wait the opportunity of a conveni∣ent change, are to steer themselves by the general Rules of Chastity.

Notes

• * 1.1

  1 Pet. 1.22.