Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On the Apparel of Women/II/Chapter 5

Chapter V.&#8212;Some Refinements in Dress and Personal Appearance Lawful, Some Unlawful.&#160; Pigments Come Under the Latter Head.

These suggestions are not made to you, of course, to be developed into an entire crudity and wildness of appearance; nor are we seeking to persuade you of the good of squalor and slovenliness; but of the limit and norm and just measure of cultivation of the person.&#160; There must be no overstepping of that line to which simple and sufficient refinements limit their desires&#8212;that line which is pleasing to God.&#160; For they who rub their skin with medicaments, stain their cheeks with rouge, make their eyes prominent with antimony, sin against .&#160; To them, I suppose, the plastic skill of God is displeasing!&#160; In their own persons, I suppose, they convict, they censure, the Artificer of all things!&#160; For censure they do when they amend, when they add to, (His work;) taking these their additions, of course, from the adversary artificer.&#160; That adversary artificer is the devil. &#160; For who would show the way to change the body, but he who by wickedness transfigured man&#8217;s spirit?&#160; He it is, undoubtedly, who adapted ingenious devices of this kind; that in your persons it may be apparent that you, in a certain sense, do violence to God.&#160; Whatever is born is the work of God.&#160; Whatever, then, is plastered on (that), is the devil&#8217;s work.&#160; To superinduce on a divine work Satan&#8217;s ingenuities, how criminal is it!&#160; Our servants borrow nothing from our personal enemies:&#160; soldiers eagerly desire nothing from the foes of their own general; for, to demand for (your own) use anything from the adversary of Him in whose hand you are, is a transgression.&#160; Shall a Christian be assisted in anything by that evil one?&#160; (If he do,) I know not whether this name (of &#8220;Christian&#8221;) will continue (to belong) to him; for he will be his in whose lore he eagerly desires to be instructed.&#160; But how alien from your schoolings and professions are (these things)!&#160; How unworthy the Christian name, to wear a fictitious face, (you,) on whom simplicity in every form is enjoined!&#8212;to lie in your appearance, (you,) to whom (lying) with the tongue is not lawful!&#8212;to seek after what is another&#8217;s, (you,) to whom is delivered (the precept of) abstinence from what is another&#8217;s!&#8212;to practise adultery in your mien, (you,) who make modesty your study!&#160; Think, blessed (sisters), how will you keep God&#8217;s precepts if you shall not keep in your own persons His lineaments?