Re Carly’s question as to whether Carew is being facetious in his last lines of “A Rapture,” I think he is and he isn’t. The notion of men being atheists and women being whores points out the severest ways that people’s honor, respective of their sex, can be smeared, as women’s chastity and men’s holiness (as we saw in Spenser) are their most valued virtues in the time period. With this idea in mind, Carew is being facetious in that his speaker knows that his religiosity and his lover’s chastity will both be compromised if he succeeds in seducing her, and she, far from not being called a whore, could easily be branded as one by a harsh, prudish society. At the same time, Carew is not being facetious because he is pointing out the most aggravating ways in which society frustrates his speaker and chafes against his lifestyle, as premarital or adulterous sex can quickly lead to one’s downfall, and how all this religious fervor might end up causing more harm than good.