There is, too, another beauty of men--love. “And love,” according to the apostle, “suffers long, and is kind; envieth not; vaunteth not itself, is not puffed up.”[629] For the decking of one’s self out--carrying, as it does, the look of superfluity and uselessness--is vaunting one’s self. Wherefore he adds, “doth not behave itself unseemly:” for a figure which is not one’s own, and is against nature, is unseemly; but what is artificial is not one’s own, as is clearly explained: “seeketh not,” it is said, “what is not her own.” For truth calls that its own which belongs to it; but the love of finery seeks what is not its own, being apart from God, and the Word, from love. And that the Lord Himself was uncomely in aspect, the Spirit testifies by Esaias: “And we saw Him, and He had no form nor comeliness; but His form was mean, inferior to men.”[630] Yet who was more admirable than the Lord? But it was not the beauty of the flesh visible to the eye, but the true beauty of both soul and body, which He exhibited, which in the former is beneficence; in the latter--that is, the flesh--immortality. CHAPTER II. AGAINST EMBELLISHING THE BODY. It is not, then, the aspect of the outward man, but the soul that is to be decorated with the ornament of goodness; we may say also the flesh with the adornment of temperance. But those women who beautify the outside, are unawares all waste in the inner depths, as is the case with the ornaments of the Egyptians; among whom temples with their porticos and vestibules are carefully constructed, and groves and sacred fields adjoining; the halls are surrounded with many pillars; and the walls gleam with foreign stones, and there is no want of artistic painting; and the temples gleam with gold, and silver, and amber, and glitter with parti-coloured gems from India and Ethiopia; and the shrines are veiled with gold-embroidered hangings. But if you enter the penetralia of the enclosure, and, in haste to behold something better, seek the image that is the inhabitant of the temple, and if any priest of those that offer sacrifice there, looking grave, and singing a pæan in the Egyptian tongue, remove a little of the veil to show the god, he will give you a hearty laugh at the object of worship. For the deity that is sought, to whom you have rushed, will not be found within, but a cat, or a crocodile, or a serpent of the country, or some such beast unworthy of the temple, but quite worthy of a den, a hole, or the dirt. The god of the Egyptians appears a beast rolling on a purple couch. So those women who wear gold, occupying themselves in curling at their locks, and engaged in anointing their cheeks, painting their eyes, and dyeing their hair, and practising the other pernicious arts of luxury, decking the covering of flesh,--in truth, imitate the Egyptians, in order to attract their infatuated lovers.