Sentence:  The novel itself suggests that Huxley knew about this attempt to go beyond gender, that the earliest Christian priests had <WSD>Agapetae</WSD>, or female ritual lovers, and that both the early Christian Gnostics and the later Catholic moralists permitted a form of coitus reservatus, the latter "claiming that it was known to Adam in the Garden and therefore a part of Paradise." 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  Women of the early Christian church who cohabited in a state of "spiritual love" with clergy or laymen who had vowed chastity.