scars and holes of the ears precious beads may hang, heavy, if not by their
weight, still by the amount of their cost? All which things sinning and
apostate angels put forth by their arts, when, lowered to the contagious of
earth, they forsook their heavenly vigour. They taught them also to paint
the eyes with blackness drawn round them in a circle, and to stain the
cheeks with a deceitful red, and to change the hair with false colours, and
to drive out all truth, both of face and head, by the assault of their own corruption.
15. And indeed in that very matter, for the sake of the fear which
faith suggests to me, for the sake of the love which brotherhood requires,
I think that not virgins only and widows, but married women also, and all
of the sex alike, should be admonished, that the work of God and His
fashioning and formation ought in no manner to be adulterated, either with
the application of yellow colour, or with black dust or rouge, or with any
kind of medicament which can corrupt the native lineaments. God says, "Let
us make man in our image and likeness; and does any one dare to alter and
to change what God has made? They are laying hands on God when they try to
re-form that which He formed, and to transfigure it, not knowing that
everything which comes into being is God's work, everything that is changed
is the devil's If any artist, in painting, were to delineate in envious
colouring the countenance and likeness and bodily appearance of any one;
and the likeness being now painted and completed, another person were to
lay hands on it, as if, when it was already formed and already painted, he,
being more skilled, could amend it, a serious wrong and a just cause of
indignation would seem natural to the former artist. And do you think
yourself likely with impunity to commit a boldness of such wicked temerity,
an offence to God the artificer? For although you may not be immodest among
men, and are not unchaste with your seducing dyes, yet when those things
which belong to God are corrupted and violated, you are engaged in a worse
adultery. That you think yourself to be adorned, that you think your hair
to be dressed, is an assault upon the divine work, is a prevarication of
the truth.
Posts
