Ante-Nicene Fathers/Volume IV/Tertullian: Part Fourth/On the Apparel of Women/II/Chapter 7

Chapter VII.&#8212;Of Elaborate Dressing of the Hair in Other Ways, and Its Bearing Upon Salvation.

What service, again, does all the labour spent in arranging the hair render to salvation?&#160; Why is no rest allowed to your hair, which must now be bound, now loosed, now cultivated, now thinned out?&#160; Some are anxious to force their hair into curls, some to let it hang loose and flying; not with good simplicity:&#160; beside which, you affix I know not what enormities of subtle and textile perukes; now, after the manner of a helmet of undressed hide, as it were a sheath for the head and a covering for the crown; now, a mass (drawn) backward toward the neck.&#160; The wonder is, that there is no (open) contending against the Lord&#8217;s prescripts!&#160; It has been pronounced that no one can add to his own stature. &#160; You, however, do add to your weight some kind of rolls, or shield-bosses, to be piled upon your necks!&#160; If you feel no shame at the enormity, feel some at the pollution; for fear you may be fitting on a holy and Christian head the slough of some one else&#8217;s head, unclean perchance, guilty perchance and destined to hell. &#160; Nay, rather banish quite away from your &#8220;free&#8221; head all this slavery of ornamentation.&#160; In vain do you labour to seem adorned:&#160; in vain do you call in the aid of all the most skilful manufacturers of false hair.&#160; God bids you &#8220;be veiled.&#8221; &#160; I believe (He does so) for fear the heads of some should be seen!&#160; And oh that in &#8220;that day&#8221; of Christian exultation, I, most miserable (as I am), may elevate my head, even though below (the level of) your heels!&#160; I shall (then) see whether you will rise with (your) ceruse and rouge and saffron, and in all that parade of headgear: &#160; whether it will be women thus tricked out whom the angels carry up to meet Christ in the air! &#160; If these (decorations) are now good, and of God, they will then also present themselves to the rising bodies, and will recognise their several places.&#160; But nothing can rise except flesh and spirit sole and pure. &#160; Whatever, therefore, does not rise in (the form of) spirit and flesh is condemned, because it is not of God.&#160; From things which are condemned abstain, even at the present day.&#160; At the present day let God see you such as He will see you then.