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| Excess in Dress, as Well as in Personal Culture, to Be Shunned. Arguments Drawn from I Cor. VII.
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Chapter IX.—Excess
in Dress, as Well as in Personal Culture, to Be Shunned.
Arguments Drawn from I Cor. VII.
Wherefore, with regard to clothing also, and all
the remaining lumber of your self-elaboration,214
| 214 Impedimenta
compositionis. | the
like pruning off and retrenchment of too redundant splendour must be
the object of your care. For what boots it to exhibit in your
face temperance and unaffectedness, and a simplicity altogether
worthy of the divine discipline, but to invest all the other
parts of the body with the luxurious absurdities of pomps and
delicacies? How intimate is the connection which these pomps have
with the business of voluptuousness, and how they interfere with
modesty, is easily discernible from the fact that it is by the allied
aid of dress that they prostitute the grace of personal
comeliness: so plain is it that if (the pomps) be wanting, they
render (that grace) bootless and thankless, as if it were disarmed and
wrecked. On the other hand, if natural beauty fails, the
supporting aid of outward embellishment supplies a grace, as it were,
from its own inherent power.215
| 215 De suo. Comp.
de Bapt., c. xvii. (sub. fin.), de Cult.
Fem., b. i. c. v. (med.). | Those times of
life, in fact, which are at last blest with quiet and withdrawn into
the harbour of modesty, the splendour and dignity of dress lure away
(from that rest and that harbour), and disquiet seriousness by
seductions of appetite, which compensate for the chill of age by the
provocative charms of apparel. First, then, blessed (sisters),
(take heed) that you admit not to your use meretricious and
prostitutionary garbs and garments: and, in the next place, if
there are any of you whom the exigencies of riches, or birth, or past
dignities, compel to appear in public so gorgeously arrayed as not to
appear to have attained wisdom, take heed to temper an evil of this
kind; lest, under the pretext of necessity, you give the rein without
stint to the indulgence of licence. For how will you be able
to fulfil (the requirements of) humility, which our (school)
profess,216
if you do not keep
within bounds217
the enjoyment of your
riches and elegancies, which tend so much to “glory?”
Now it has ever been the wont of glory to exalt, not to
humble. “Why, shall we not use what is our
own?” Who prohibits your using it? Yet (it must be)
in accordance with the apostle, who warns us “to use this
world218
as if we abuse it not; for the
fashion219
of this world220
is
passing away.” And “they who buy are so to act as if
they possessed not.”221
Why so?
Because he had laid down the premiss, saying, “The time is wound
up.”222
If, then he
shows plainly that even wives themselves are so to be had as if they be
not had,223
on account of the
straits of the times, what would be his sentiments about these vain
appliances of theirs? Why, are there not many, withal, who so
do, and seal themselves up to eunuchhood for the sake of the
kingdom of God,224
spontaneously
relinquishing a pleasure so honourable,225
and
(as we know) permitted? Are there not some who prohibit to
themselves (the use of) the very “creature of
God,”226
abstaining from wine
and animal food, the enjoyments of which border upon no peril or
solicitude; but they sacrifice to God the humility of their soul even
in the chastened use of food? Sufficiently, therefore, have you,
too, used your riches and your delicacies; sufficiently have you cut
down the fruits of your dowries, before (receiving) the knowledge of
saving disciplines. We are they “upon whom the ends of the
ages have met, having ended their course.”227
We have been predestined by God, before
the world228
was, (to arise) in
the extreme end of the times.229
And so we are
trained by God for the purpose of chastising, and (so to say)
emasculating, the world.230
We are the
circumcision231
—spiritual and
carnal—of all things; for both in the spirit and in the flesh we
circumcise worldly232
principles.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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