504. (3) Defloration without intention of marriage is the villainous act of a robber. Some adulterers have a lust to deflower virgins, including therefore also girls of a naive age. The girls are enticed into these acts by the persuasions of female intermediaries, or by gifts from the men, or by promises of marriage; and after deflowering them the men abandon them and go in search of others and still others after them. Moreover they have no pleasure in the girls they have had, but gain it only from continually new ones; and this lust grows in them until it becomes the principal delight of their flesh. To these practices some add also the following enormity, that by various artifices they entice maidens before their wedding or right after their wedding to offer to them the first gifts of their marriage, thus foully defiling the marriage as well. I have heard, too, that when that heat together with its ability wanes, they boast of the number of virgins they have had, as though over so many fleeces like the golden one stolen by Jason. [2] This villainy, or debauchery, once commenced at an age of vigor and afterwards defended in boasts, remains deeply implanted and is thus entrenched after death. The nature of the villainy is apparent from observations made above, that virginity is the crown of a woman's chastity, a token of conjugial love to come, and that a maiden commits her soul and life to the man to whom she yields it. The friendship of a marriage and its accompanying trust are also founded on it. In addition, too, after this portal of conjugial love has been breached, a woman deflowered by villains such as these loses her sense of shame and becomes a trollop, for which as well that thief is responsible. [3] If, after these indulgences of sexual lust and profane desecrations of chastity have come to an end, these robbers themselves turn their mind to marriage, they mentally contemplate only the virginity of their bride to be; and after they have tasted it, they loathe the marriage bed and chamber, indeed the entire female sex as well, all except young girls. Accordingly, because such men are violators of marriage and despisers of the feminine sex, and so are spiritual bandits, it is apparent that a Divine retribution pursues them.