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| Concerning Private Festivals.
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Chapter XVI.—Concerning Private Festivals.
Touching the ceremonies, however, of private and
social solemnities—as those of the white toga, of espousals, of
nuptials, of name-givings—I should think no danger need be
guarded against from the breath of the idolatry which is mixed up with
them. For the causes are to be considered to which the ceremony is due.
Those above-named I take to be clean in themselves, because neither
manly garb, nor the marital ring or union, descends from honours done
to any idol. In short, I find no dress cursed by God, except a
woman’s dress on a man:288
for
“cursed,” saith He, “is every man who clothes himself
in woman’s attire.” The toga, however, is a dress of manly
name as well as of manly use.289
| 289 Because it was called
toga virilis—“the manly
toga.” | God
no more prohibits nuptials to be celebrated than a name to be given.
“But there are sacrifices appropriated to these occasions.”
Let me be invited, and let not the title of the ceremony be
“assistance at a sacrifice,” and the discharge of my good
offices is at the service of my friends. Would that it were
“at their service” indeed, and that we could escape
seeing what is unlawful for us to do. But since the
evil one has so surrounded the world with idolatry, it will be lawful
for us to be present at some ceremonies which see us doing service to a
man, not to an idol. Clearly, if invited unto
priestly function and sacrifice, I will not go, for that is service
peculiar to an idol; but neither will I furnish advice, or expense, or
any other good office in a matter of that kind. If it is on
account of the sacrifice that I be invited, and stand by, I
shall be partaker of idolatry; if any other cause conjoins me to
the sacrificer, I shall be merely a spectator of the
sacrifice.290
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