My, O my!  This slighting of Puritans!  The improvident virgins could have used a little Puritan self-discipline.  (Luke 14:28  also advises prudent forethought.)  'Twas Augustine, so I've read, that gave guilt to sex, all sex.  Not long ago, I ran across a study of marriage and birth records in colonial New England:   the gestation period for about half of first-born babies was significantly less than nine months.  In fact, the study concluded, Puritans applauded--even exulted in sex--and obviously pre-marital sex--but 'twas unwed parents and adultery--and no doubt sodomy--that drew public scorn and worse.   Large families abounded and helped till the soil.  A French woman, a  professor on loan to a stateside university, credits the Puritan/Protestant "work ethic" for the economic superiority of northwestern and central Europe, especially those Angles and Saxons that settled England.  She added that such "ugly American" technological developments as the automatic washing machine and wash-and wear-clothing have done more to help women than polemics.  (I could not resist replying, "By their works [not their words] you shall know them.")  In my early 20's, traveling through Mexico and Central America, I met in an out-of-the-way village a young student who inquired about my religious affiliation.  In our conversation, he gave plebeian verification to the academic observation of the French professor, to wit:  "Devout Catholics don't prosper around here."  Well, IMO, the Reformation, the Industrial Revolution, and the Commerical Revolution intertwined to contribute mightily to unshackling the God-given human psyche; and in America, that spirit tamed a savage wilderness with incrediblly fast--all in line with God's plan for the world, dare I say.  It took a long time for me to accept the thought of a 19th Century Anglican clergyman and writer--Joseph Fort Newton--that the prologue to the Gospel of John was the profoundest philosophy on earth.  "Let me offer a suggestion," he wrote, "that the Spirit that is behind history, in it and over it, and the Spirit that we call Christ, are one and the same; else why is He our eternal contemporary, in defiance of time, distance, and death?  ...Each man has his own need, and that need, whatever it may be, is his point of contact with Christ.  There is no one way where all must go, where none can wander and all must know--no, there are many gates to the City of God.  From this you will perceive my reason for speaking of him as my MY CHRIST--even mine.  ...This is his world, and he will yet have his way with it.  Of old, men fought against Him and put Him to death, but it was futile.  They were not done with Him when they left Him hanging on the cross.  In the crisis of individual souls, in the strange vicissitudes of history, over and over again, when it seemed that men had done with Him, 'then came Jesus, the doors being barred, and stood in the midst.'  ...And His victory is as sure as the flow of the tides and the march of the stars."