Then she must not adorn herself in any way. “It is not right in God,” says Commodian,[159] “that a faithful Christian woman should be adorned.” The purpose of clothing is to defend the body against excess of cold and intensity of heat, and the simplest materials are sufficient for this purpose. The Christian woman must therefore bid farewell to embroidery of gold and Indian silks; she is strictly forbidden to wear gold ornaments of any kind, and she is to avoid all dyed clothes, as the dye is unnecessary for health, afflicts greedy eyes, and, moreover, it is false; for God would have made the sheep purple if He had wished the woollen clothes to be purple. Strong condemnation is uttered against any attempt to trick out the person. “Head-dresses,” says Clement[160] of Alexandria, “and varieties of head-dresses, and elaborate braidings, and infinite modes of dressing the hair, and costly mirrors in which they arrange their costume, are characteristic of women who have lost all shame.” And if the adornment of the natural body is thus condemned, the endless variety of artificial contrivances employed by the Roman and Greek ladies is necessarily considered abominable. In regard to the hair, Cyprian[161] addresses virgins thus: “Are sincerity and truth preserved when what is sincere is polluted by adulterous colours, and what is true is changed into a lie by the deceitful dyes of medicaments? Your Lord says, ‘Thou canst not make one hair black or white,’ and you, in order to overcome the word of your Lord, will be more mighty than He, and stain your hair with a daring endeavour and with profane contempt; with evil presage of the future, make a beginning to yourself already of flame-coloured hair.” And he uses equally strong expressions in regard to tinting the eyes, “You cannot see God, since your eyes are not those which God made, but those which the devil has spoiled. You have followed him, you have imitated the red and painted eyes of the serpent. As you are adorned in the fashion of your enemy, with him also you shall burn by-and-by.” And he thus sums up the exhortations which he addresses to the virgins: “Let your countenance remain in you incorrupt, your neck unadorned, your figure simple; let not wounds be made in your ears, nor let the precious chain of bracelets and necklaces circle your arms or your neck; let your feet be free from golden bands, your hair stained with no dye, your eyes worthy of beholding God.” Notwithstanding all the exhortations which were showered upon the wives and virgins, the Christian writings prove that human nature often had its own way. Both Clement and Cyprian tell dreadful stories of some of the virgins, and in the treatise of Cyprian from which I have quoted there are lamentations like this: “For this reason, therefore, the Church frequently mourns over her virgins; hence she groans at their scandalous and detestable stories; hence the flower of her virgins is