Bad Advertisement?
Are you a Christian?
Online Store:Visit Our Store
| Waiving the Question of the Authors, Tertullian Proposes to Consider the Things on Their Own Merits. PREVIOUS SECTION - NEXT SECTION - HELP
Chapter
IV.—Waiving the Question of the Authors, Tertullian Proposes to
Consider the Things on Their Own Merits.
Grant now that no mark of pre-condemnation has
been branded on womanly pomp by the (fact of the) fate112 of its authors; let nothing be imputed to
those angels besides their repudiation of heaven and (their) carnal
marriage:113 let us examine
the qualities of the things themselves, in order that we may detect the
purposes also for which they are eagerly desired.
Female habit carries with it a twofold
idea—dress and ornament. By “dress” we mean
what they call “womanly gracing;”114
114 Mundum muliebrem.
Comp. Liv. xxxiv. 7. | by
“ornament,” what it is suitable should be called
“womanly disgracing.”115
The former is accounted (to consist) in gold, and silver, and gems, and
garments; the latter in care of the hair, and of the skin, and of those
parts of the body which attract the eye. Against the one we lay
the charge of ambition, against the other of prostitution; so that even
from this early stage116
116 Jam hinc; comp.
ad. Ux., i. 1 ad init. and ad fin., and 8 ad
fin. | (of our discussion)
you may look forward and see what, out of (all) these, is suitable,
handmaid of God, to your discipline, inasmuch as you are
assessed on different principles (from other women),—those,
namely, of humility and chastity.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
|