From these modern proofs, let us pass to those which antiquity or the contemporaries of this council ought to furnish us with. St. Sidoin Apollinarius says very clearly, speaking of the time of this council of Carthage: _Tum coma brevis & barba prolixa; At that time people wore short hair and long beards._ Tertullian says a great deal about this same council; he maintains that the word _radat_ has been suppressed in the 44th canon; he cries out upon the licentiousness of his age, too fertile in like impositions, and says, in plain terms! _Corrigendum est reponendumque, juxta fidem veterum exemplarium, Clericus nec comam nutriat, nec barbam radat. This canon ought to be corrected, and, conformably to the fidelity of the old copies, it should be written, that no clergyman should wear his hair, or shave his beard._[79] We see what a distance our short cloke clergy keep from this edifying regulation. Footnote 79: It may not be amiss perhaps to correct a chronological error that is in the epochs of this council of Carthage and the life of Tertullian. All the commentators and chroniclers place this council in the year 398, and the death of this learned man about the year 220 of our æra. According to them, he should have lived about a century and half before this council. After that, one is greatly surprised to find, in the works of this same Tertullian, his observations on this council of Carthage, and still more so, to find him speak of it as an epoch much earlier than that in which he was writing; for, when he condemns the supression of the word _radat_, he says it ought to be restored conformably to the fidelity of the old copies, _juxta fidem veterum exemplarium, &c._ The anachronism is more than two centuries. Saint Epiphanius lived in the time of this council of Carthage: this was a very learned Saint. Let us see in his writings if the fathers of those days proclaim the proscription of long beards. With respect to the heretic Massalians he speaks thus. “Is there any thing more contrary to good morals than their customs? They cut off their beards, the mark of manhood, and wear very long hair. Nevertheless, the sacred expressions of the constitutions of the apostles dogmatically prescribe the rules that are to be observed with respect to the beard: it is forbidden to cut off any part of it, for fear lest men should at length get themselves quite shaved, and lay hold of the effeminate manners and luxury of abandoned rakes.”[80] Footnote 80: _Sed deterius quiddam, ac contrarium ab illis geritur: siquidem isti barbam, hoc est, propriam viri formam, resecant; capillos vero, ut plurimum, prolixiores habent. Atqui quod ad barbam attinet in Apostolorum constitutionbus divino sermone, à degmate præscribitur, ne ea corrumpatur: hoc est, ne barba ponatur neve meretricius cultus & ornatus usurpetur, &c._ St. Epiphanius against the heretic Massalians, sect. viii.