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Part Fourth
These suggestions are not made to you, of course, to be developed into an entire crudity and wildness of appearance; nor are we seeking to persuade you of the good of squalor and slovenliness; but of the limit and norm and just measure of cultivation of the person. There must be no overstepping of that line to which simple and sufficient refinements limit their desires—that line which is pleasing to God. For they who rub[176] their skin with medicaments, stain their cheeks with rouge, make their eyes prominent with antimony,[177] sin against Him. To them, I suppose, the plastic skill[178] of God is displeasing! In their own persons, I suppose, they convict, they censure, the Artificer of all things! For censure they do when they amend, whenthey add to, (His work;) taking these their additions, of course, from the adversary artificer. That adversary artificer is the devil.[179] For who would show the way to change the body, but he who by wickedness transfigured man’s spirit? He it is, undoubtedly, who adapted ingenious devices of this kind; that in your persons it may be apparent that you, in a certain sense, do violence to God. Whatever is born is the work of God. Whatever, then, is plastered on[180] (that), is the devil’s work. To superinduce on a divine work Satan’s ingenuities, how criminal is it! Our servants borrow nothing from our personal enemies: soldiers eagerly desire nothing from the foes of their own general; for, to demand for (your own) use anything from the adversary of Him in whose hand[181] you are, is a transgression. Shall a Christian be assisted in anything by that evil one? (If he do,) I know not whether this name (of “Christian”) will continue (to belong) to him; for he will be his in whose lore he eagerly desires to be instructed. But how alien from your schoolings[182] and professions are (these things)! How unworthy the Christian name, to wear a fictitious face, (you,) on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined!—to lie in your appearance, (you,) to whom (lying) with the tongue is not lawful!—to seek after what is another’s, (you,) to whom is delivered (the precept of) abstinence from what is another’s!—to practise adultery in your mien,[183] (you,) who make modesty your study! Think,[184] blessed (sisters), how will you keep God’s precepts if you shall not keep in your own persons His lineaments?
I see some (women) turn (the colour of) their hair with saffron. They are ashamed even of their own nation, (ashamed) that their procreation did not assign them to Germany and to Gaul: thus, as it is, they transfer their hair[185] (thither)! Ill, ay, most ill, do they augur for themselves with their flame-coloured head,[186] and think that graceful which (in fact) they are polluting! Nay, moreover, the force of the cosmetics burns ruin into the hair; and the constant application of even any undrugged moisture, lays up a store of harm for the head; while the sun’s warmth, too, so desirable for imparting to the hair at once growth and dryness, is hurtful. What “grace” is compatible with “injury?” What “beauty” with “impurities?” Shall a Christian woman heap saffron on her head, as upon an altar?[187] For, whatever is wont to be burned to the honour of the unclean spirit, that—unless it is applied for honest, and necessary, and salutary uses, for which God’s creature was provided—may seem to be a sacrifice. But, however, God saith, “Which of you can make a white hair black, or out of a black a white?”[188] And so they refute the Lord! “Behold!” say they, “instead of white or black, we make it yellow,—more winning in grace.”[189] And yet such as repent of having lived to old age do attempt to change it even from white to black! O temerity! The age which is the object of our wishes and prayers blushes (for itself)! a theft is effected! youth, wherein we have sinned,[190] is sighed after! the opportunity of sobriety is spoiled! Far from Wisdom’s daughters be folly so great! The more old age tries to conceal itself, the more will it be detected. Here is a veritable eternity, in the (perennial) youth of your head! Here we have an “incorruptibility” to “put on,”[191] with a view to the new house of the Lord[192] which the divine monarchy promises! Well do you speed toward the Lord; well do you hasten to be quit of this most iniquitous world,[193] to whom it is unsightly to approach (your own) end!
What service, again, does all the labour spent in arranging the hair render to salvation? Why is no rest allowed to your hair, which must now be bound, now loosed, now cultivated, now thinned out? Some are anxious to force their hair into curls, some to let it hang loose and flying; not with good simplicity: beside which, you affix I know not what enormities of subtle and textile perukes; now, after the manner of a helmet of undressed hide, as it were a sheath for the head and a covering for the crown; now, a mass (drawn) backward toward the neck. The wonder is, that there is no (open) contending against the Lord’s prescripts! It has been pronounced that no one can add to his own stature.[194] You, however, do add to your weight some kind of rolls, or shield-bosses, to be piled upon your necks! If you feel no shame at the enormity, feel some at the pollution; for fear you may be fitting on a holy and Christian head the slough[195] of some one else’s[196] head, unclean perchance, guilty perchance and destined to hell.[197] Nay, rather banish quite away from your “free”[198] head all this slavery of ornamentation. In vain do you labour to seem adorned: in vain do you call in the aid of all the most skilful manufacturers of false hair. God bids you “be veiled.”[199] I believe (He does so) for fear the heads of some should be seen! And oh that in “that day”[200] of Christian exultation, I, most miserable (as I am), may elevate my head, even though below (the level of) your heels! I shall (then) see whether you will rise with (your) ceruse and rouge and saffron, and in all that parade of headgear:[201] whether it will be women thus tricked out whom the angels carry up to meet Christ in the air![202] If these (decorations) are now good, and of God, they will then also present themselves to the rising bodies, and will recognise their several places. But nothing can rise except flesh and spirit sole and pure.[203] Whatever, therefore, does not rise in (the form of)[204] spirit and flesh is condemned, because it is not of God. From things which are condemned abstain, even at the present day. At the present day let God see you such as He will see you then.
Of course, now, I, a man, as being envious[205] of women, am banishing them quite from their own (domains). Are there, in our case too, some things which, in respect of the sobriety[206] we are to maintain on account of the fear[207] due to God, are disallowed?[208] If it is true, (as it is,) that in men, for the sake of women (just as in women for the sake of men), there is implanted, by a defect of nature, the will to please; and if this sex of ours acknowledges to itself deceptive trickeries of form peculiarly its own,—(such as) to cut the beard too sharply; to pluck it out here and there; to shave round about (the mouth); to arrange the hair, and disguise its hoariness by dyes; to remove all the incipient down all over the body; to fix (each particular hair) in its place with (some) womanly pigment; to smooth all the rest of the body by the aid of some rough powder or other: then, further, to take every opportunity for consulting the mirror; to gaze anxiously into it:—while yet, when (once) the knowledge of God has put an end to all wish to please by means of voluptuous attraction, all these things are rejected as frivolous, as hostile to modesty. For where God is, there modesty is; there is sobriety[209] her assistant and ally. How, then, shall we practise modesty without her instrumental mean,[210] that is, without sobriety?[211] How, moreover, shall we bring sobriety[212] to bear on the discharge of (the functions of) modesty, unless seriousness in appearance and in countenance, and in the general aspect[213] of the entire man, mark our carriage?
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