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,135    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.136    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  Those times of life, in fact, which are at last blest with quiet and withdrawn into the harbour of modesty, the splendour and dignity of dress lure away (from that rest and that harbour), and disquiet seriousness by seductions of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,137    See c. iii. if you do not keep within bounds138    Repastinantes. 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 world139    Mundo; κόσμῳ.  See 1 Cor. vii. 31. as if we abuse it not; for the fashion140    Habitus; σχῆμα, ib. of this world141    Κόσμου, ib. is passing away.”  And “they who buy are so to act as if they possessed not.”142    1 Cor. vii. 30.  Why so?  Because he had laid down the premiss, saying, “The time is wound up.”143    1 Cor. vii. 29.  If, then he shows plainly that even wives themselves are so to be had as if they be not had,144    1 Cor. vii. 29. 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,145    Matt. xix. 12. spontaneously relinquishing a pleasure so honourable,146    Fortem. and (as we know) permitted?  Are there not some who prohibit to themselves (the use of) the very “creature of God,”147    Comp. 1 Tim. iv. 4, 5. 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.”148    1 Cor. x. 11, εἰς οὕς τὰ τέλη τῶν αἰωνων κατήντησεν.  We have been predestined by God, before the world149    Mundum. was, (to arise) in the extreme end of the times.150    In extimatione temporali.  See Eph. i. 4 and 1 Pet. i. 20.  And so we are trained by God for the purpose of chastising, and (so to say) emasculating, the world.151    Sæculo.  We are the circumcision152    Comp. Phil. iii. 3.—spiritual and carnal—of all things; for both in the spirit and in the flesh we circumcise worldly153    Sæcularia. principles.

CAPUT IX.

Quamobrem erga vestitum quoque et reliqua compositionis vestrae impedimenta proinde vobis curanda est amputatio et decussio redundantioris nitoris . Nam quid prodest, faciem quidem frugi et expeditam et simplicitatem condignam divinae disciplinae exhibere, caetera vero corporis laciniosis 1325C quasi non abutamur. Praeterit enim, inquit, habitus 1326A pomparum et deliciarum ineptiis occupare? Hae pompae quam de proximo curent luxuriae negotium et obstrepant pudicitiae disciplinis, dignoscere in facili est, quod gratiam decoris cultus societate prostituant; adeo, si desint, irritam et ingratam reddunt, velut exarmatam et naufragam. Contra si forma defecit, adminiculum nitoris quasi de suo gratiam supplet. Aetates denique requietas jam et in portum modestiae subductas splendor et dignitas cultus avocant et severitatem appetitionibus inquietant, compensantibus scilicet habitus irritamentum pro frigore aetatis. Ergo, benedictae, primo quidem ut lenones et prostitutores vestitus et cultus ne in vos admiseritis; tum si quas vel divitiarum [suarum] vel natalium vel retro dignitatum ratio compellit ita pompaticas progredi, 1326B ut sapientiam consecutae temperare saltem ab hujusmodi curate, ne totis habenis licentiam usurpetis praetextu necessitatis. Quomodo enim humilitatem, quam christiani profitemur, implere poterimus , non repastinantes divitiarum vestrarum vel elegantiarum usum, quae ad gloriam faciunt? Gloria autem exaltare, non humiliare consuevit. Non enim utemur nostris? Quis autem prohibet uti? Secundum apostolum tamen, qui nos uti monet mundo isto, hujus mundi . Et qui emunt, inquit, sic agant, quasi non possidentes. Cur ita? quoniam praemiserat, dicens: Tempus in collecto est (I Cor., VII, 29-31). Si ergo uxores quoque ipsas sic habendas demonstrat, tanquam non habeantur, propter angustias temporum, quid de vanis his instrumentis 1326C earum? Non enim et ita multi faciunt, et se spadonatui 1327A assignant propter regnum Dei (Matth., XIX, 12), tam fortem et utique permissam voluptatem sponte ponentes? Quidam ipsam Dei creaturam sibi interdicunt, abstinentes vino et animalibus esculentis , quorum fructus nulli periculo aut sollicitudini adjacent; sed humilitatem animae suae in victus quoque castigatione Deo immolant. Satis igitur et vos usae estis divitiis atque deliciis, satis dotum vestrarum fructum decidistis ante notitiam salutarium disciplinarum. Nos sumus, in quos decurrerunt fines saeculorum. Nos destinati a Deo ante mundum in aestimationem temporum ; tanquam castigando et castrando, ut ita dixerim, saeculo erudimur a Domino. Nos sumus circumcisio omnium et spiritalis et carnalis, nam spiritu et carne saecularia circumcidimus .