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. 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.

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 mode of vegetation
might have peopled paradise with a race of innocent and immortal beings.
The use of marriage was permitted only to his fallen posterity, as a
necessary expedient to continue the human species, and as a restraint,
however imperfect, on the natural licentiousness of desire. The
hesitation of the orthodox casuists on this interesting subject, betrays
the perplexity of men, unwilling to approve an institution which they
were compelled to tolerate. The enumeration of the very whimsical laws,
which they most circumstantially imposed on the marriage-bed, would
force a smile from the young and a blush from the fair. It was their
unanimous sentiment, that a first marriage was adequate to all the
purposes of nature and of society. The sensual connection was refined
into a resemblance of the mystic union of Christ with his church, and
was pronounced to be indissoluble either by divorce or by death.
The practice of second nuptials was branded with the name of a egal
adultery; and the persons who were guilty of so scandalous an offence
against Christian purity, were soon excluded from the honors, and even
from the alms, of the church. Since desire was imputed