This was a very hard hit indeed; but it was not nearly so clever a stroke at wigs as that dealt by Clemens of Alexandria. The latter informed the astounded wig-wearers that, when they knelt at church to receive the blessing, they must be good enough to recollect that the benediction remained on the wig, and did not pass through to the wearer! This was a stumbling-block to the people; many of whom however retained the peruke, and took their chance as to the percolating through it of the benediction. On similarly obstinate people, Tertullian railed with a hasty charge of ill-prepared logic. “You were not born with wigs,” said he; “God did not give them to you. God not giving them, you must necessarily have received them from the devil.” It was manifest that so rickety a syllogism was incapable of shaking the lightest _scratch_ from a reasoning Christian’s skull. Indeed the logic of Tertullian, when levied against wigs, is exceedingly faulty. Men of the world he points out as being given to over-scrupulous cleanliness. Your _saint_ is dirty from an impulse of duty; were he otherwise, he might be too seductive to the weaker sex. This reminds me of the monk of Prague who was blind, but he had so fine a nose that he was able to distinguish between a saint and a sinner by the smell! Not only were the Scriptures pressed into service against those who wore false hair or dyed their own, but zealous Christian priests quoted even heathen writers to shame men out of the custom. It is a remarkable thing how well acquainted these well-meaning, but somewhat over-straining, personages were with the erotic poets of heathendom.