Of Elaborate Dressing of the Hair in Other Ways, and Its Bearing Upon Salvation.

Chapter VII.—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?  Why is no rest allowed to your hair, which must now be bound, now loosed, now cultivated, now thinned out?  Some are anxious to force their hair into curls, some to let it hang loose and flying; not with good simplicity:  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.  The wonder is, that there is no (open) contending against the Lord’s prescripts!  It has been pronounced that no one can add to his own stature.¹⁹⁴  You, however, do add to your weight some kind of rolls, or shield-bosses, to be piled upon your necks!  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 slough¹⁹⁵ of some one else’s¹⁹⁶ head, unclean perchance, guilty perchance and destined to hell.¹⁹⁷  Nay, rather banish quite away from your “free”¹⁹⁸ head all this slavery of ornamentation.  In vain do you labour to seem adorned:  in vain do you call in the aid of all the most skilful manufacturers of false hair.  God bids you “be veiled.”¹⁹⁹  I believe (He does so) for fear the heads of some should be seen!  And oh that in “that day”²⁰⁰ of Christian exultation, I, most miserable (as I am), may elevate my head, even though below (the level of) your heels!  I shall (then) see whether you will rise with (your) ceruse and rouge and saffron, and in all that parade of headgear:²⁰¹  whether it will be women thus tricked out whom the angels carry up to meet Christ in the air!²⁰²  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.  But nothing can rise except flesh and spirit sole and pure.²⁰³  Whatever, therefore, does not rise in (the form of)²⁰⁴ spirit and flesh is condemned, because it is not of God.  From things which are condemned abstain, even at the present day.  At the present day let God see you such as He will see you then.