Tertullian

“ Another secret mother, Nature, and another hidden father, Time, have wedded their daughter to their own laws. Behold that virgin-daughter of yours already wedded—her soul by expectancy, her flesh by transformation—for whom you are preparing a second husband! Already her voice is changed, her limbs fully formed, her “shame” everywhere clothing itself, the months paying their tributes; and do you deny her to be a woman whom you assert to be undergoing womanly experiences? If the contact of a man makes a woman, let there be no covering except after actual experience of marriage. ”

“ Oh woman already belonging to Christ’s discipline! For she showed that marriage likewise, as fornication is, is transacted by gaze and mind; only that a Rebecca likewise some do still veil. With regard to the rest, however (that is, those who are not betrothed) , let the procrastination of their parents, arising from straitened means or scrupulosity, look (to them) ; let the vow of continence itself look (to them) . In no respect does (such procrastination) pertain to an age which is already running its own assigned course, and paying its own dues to maturity. ”

“ Therefore if she is a virgin so long as she is unripe, she ceases to be a virgin when she is perceived to be ripe; and, as not-virgin, is now subject to the law, just as she is to marriage. And the betrothed indeed have the example of Rebecca, who, when she was being conducted—herself still unknown—to an unknown betrothed, as soon as she learned that he whom she had sighted from afar was the man, awaited not the grasp of the hand, nor the meeting of the kiss, nor the interchange of salutation ”