Page:Heavenly Bridegrooms.djvu/25

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Heavenly Bridegrooms
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commended by form or by character. Let none of you think that if she abstain from the care of her person [compositione sui]; she will incur the hatred and aversion of husbands. Every husband is the exactor of chastity; but beauty a believing [husband] does not require, because we are not captivated by the same graces which the Gentiles think to be graces."

Tertul, on Female Dress, Book IT, Chap. IV.

"Do ye matrons flee from the adorning of vanity such attire is fitting for women who haunt the brothels. * * * * * * To a wife approved of her husband, let it suffice that she is so not by her dress, but by her good disposition. The instructions of Commodianus in favor of Christian Discipline against the Gods of the Heathens, 59."

Let us remember that these and similar teachings by the early Christian Fathers have laid the foundation of our present marriage customs. The theory that a woman sins in adorning herself to please a husband (whether present or prospective), and this theory is still indescribably popular among devout Christians.

Commodianus ascribes the teaching of "arts, * * * * * and the dyeing of wool, and everything which is done," not to the angels but to the giant progeny. And he adds:

"To them, when they died, man erected images. But the Almighty, because they were of an evil seed, did not approve that, when dead, they should be brought back from death. Whence wandering they now subvert many bodies, and it is such as these especially that ye this day worship and pray to as gods."

The Instructions of Commodianus in favor of Christian Discipline, against the Gods of the Heathen.

The author of the Clementine Homilies records a tradition concerning these gigantic "wanderers" on the borders of Ghostland which seems to him that they were not unable to beget children: After speaking of the Deluge he says:

"Since, therefore, the souls of the deceased giants were greater than human souls, inasmuch as they also excelled their bodies, they, as being a new race, were called also by a new name. And to those who survived in the world