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| Such Outward Adornments Meretricious, and Therefore Unsuitable to Modest Women.
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Chapter XII.—Such
Outward Adornments Meretricious, and Therefore Unsuitable to Modest
Women.
Let us only wish that we may be no cause for just
blasphemy! But how much more provocative of blasphemy is it that
you, who are called modesty’s priestesses, should appear in
public decked and painted out after the manner of the
immodest? Else, (if you so do,) what inferiority would the
poor unhappy victims of the public lusts have (beneath you)? whom,
albeit some laws were (formerly) wont to restrain them from (the use
of) matrimonial and matronly decorations, now, at all events, the daily
increasing depravity of the age253
has raised so nearly
to an equality with all the most honourable women, that the difficulty
is to distinguish them. And yet, even the Scriptures suggest (to
us the reflection), that meretricious attractivenesses of form are
invariably conjoined with and appropriate254
to
bodily prostitution. That powerful state255
which
presides over256
| 256 Or, “sits on high
above.” | the seven mountains
and very many waters, has merited from the Lord the appellation of a
prostitute.257
But what kind
of garb is the instrumental mean of her comparison with that
appellation? She sits, to be sure, “in purple, and scarlet,
and gold, and precious stone.” How accursed are the things
without (the aid of) which an accursed prostitute could not have been
described! It was the fact that Thamar “had painted out and
adorned herself” that led Judah to regard her as a
harlot,258
and thus, because she was hidden beneath her
“veil,”—the quality of her garb belying her as if she
had been a harlot,—he judged (her to be one), and addressed and
bargained with (her as such). Whence we gather an additional
confirmation of the lesson, that provision must be made in every
way against all immodest
associations259
and suspicions.
For why is the integrity of a chaste mind defiled by its
neighbour’s suspicion? Why is a thing from which I am
averse hoped for in me? Why does not my garb pre-announce my
character, to prevent my spirit from being wounded by shamelessness
through (the channel of) my ears? Grant that it be lawful to
assume the appearance of a modest woman:260
to assume that of an immodest is, at all events, not
lawful.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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