Tuesday, May 09, 2006

I can agree with Tertullian, at least partially

"In their censures of luxury the fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; and among the various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate false hair, garments of any colour except white, instruments of music, vases of gold or silver, downy pillows (as Jacob reposed his head on a stone), white bread, foreign wines, public salutations, the use of warm baths, and the practice of shaving the beard, which, according to Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious attempt to improve the works of the Creator."

Chapter 15, History of the Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire, Edward Gibbon

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