mpossible to reject the use of them.
The first sensation of pleasure was marked as the first moment of their
abuse. The unfeeling candidate for heaven was instructed, not only to
resist the grosser allurements of the taste or smell, but even to
shut his ears against the profane harmony of sounds, and to view with
indifference the most finished productions of human art. Gay apparel,
magnificent houses, and elegant furniture, were supposed to unite
the double guilt of pride and of sensuality; a simple and mortified
appearance was more suitable to the Christian who was certain of his
sins and doubtful of his salvation. In their censures of luxury, the
fathers are extremely minute and circumstantial; [89] and among the
various articles which excite their pious indignation, we may enumerate
false hair, garments of any color 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 the
expression of Tertullian, is a lie against our own faces, and an impious
attempt to improve the works of the Creator. [90] When Christianity
was introduced among the rich and the polite, the observation of these
singular laws was left, as it would be at present, to the few who
were ambitious of superior sanctity. But it is always easy, as well as
agreeable, for the inferior ranks of mankind to claim a merit from the
contempt of that pomp and pleasure which fortune has placed beyond their
reach. The virtue of the primitive Christians, like that of the first
Romans, was very frequently guarded by poverty and ignorance.

[Footnote 88: Lactant. Institut. Divin. l. vi. c. 20, 21, 22.]

[Footnote 89: Consult a work of Clemens of Alexandria, entitled The
Paedagogue, which contains the rudiments of ethics, as they were taught
in the most celebrated of the Christian schools.]

[Footnote 90: Tertullian, de Spectaculis, c. 23. Clemens Alexandrin.
Paedagog. l. iii. c. 8.]

The chaste severity of the fathers, in whatever related to the commerce
of the two sexes, flowed from the same principle; their abhorrence
of every enjoyment which might gratify the sensual, and degrade the
spiritual, nature of man. It was their favorite opinion, that if Adam
had preserved his obedience to the Creator, he would have lived forever
in a state of virgin purity, and that some harmless mo