The absurdity of luxury while seeking reconciliation
Tertullian is addressing those who shrink from the public confession because of its bodily discomforts, and he now contrasts their pampering of the body with the self-denial that even pagans undergo for worldly ambition.
What if, beyond the modesty they consider so important, they also dread the bodily discomforts—having to stay unwashed, filthy, outside all festivity, in the roughness of sackcloth and the griminess of ashes, with the emptiness of the face from fasting? Are we then to plead for our sins dressed in scarlet and Tyrian purple? Hand me the pin for parting the hair and the powder for polishing the teeth and some two-pronged tool of iron or bronze for scraping the nails. Apply whatever artificial shine, whatever forced redness, to lips or cheeks. What is more, seek out the more pleasant baths in gardens or seaside retreats, add to the expense, hunt down enormous fattened fowl, clarify the aged wine—and when someone asks you for whom you are lavishing all this, say: I have sinned against God, and I am in danger of perishing forever. So now I hang and am worn down and am tortured, so that I may reconcile God to me, whom I injured by sinning.
But those who go about canvassing for public office are neither ashamed nor reluctant to strive with every disadvantage of soul and body—and not only disadvantages, but every kind of insult—for the sake of what they desire. What shabby clothing do they not put on? What doorways do they not occupy with nighttime and undigested greetings? They shrink at every encounter with any person of greater rank, celebrated at no banquets, gathered at no feasts, but exiled from the happiness of freedom and festivity—and all of it for the fleeting joy of a single year. We, though the pursuit of the fasces sustains us, doubt whether we can endure the danger of eternity? And shall we refuse to offer to an offended Lord the discipline of food and dress that the nations impose on themselves when no one at all has been injured? These are the ones of whom Scripture says: Woe to those who tie their sins together like a long rope (Isaiah 5:18).
Latin
Quid si praeter pudorem, quem potiorem putant, etiam incommoda corporis reformident, quod inlotos, quod sordulentos, quod extra laetitiam oportet deversari in asperitudine sacci et horrore cineris et oris de ieiunio vanitate? Num ergo in coccino et Tyrio pro delictis supplicare nos condecet? Cedo acum crinibus distinguendis et pulverem dentibus elimandis et bisulcum aliquid ferri vel aeris unguibus repastinandis, si quid ficti nitoris, si quid coacti ruboris in labia aut genas urgeat. Praeterea exquirito balneas laetiores hortulani maritimive secessus, adiicito ad sumptum, conquirito altilium enormem saginam, defaecato senectutem vini, cumque quis interrogarit, cuinam ea largiaris, Deliqui, dicito, in deum, et periclitor in aeternum perire; itaque nunc pendeo et maceror et excrucior, ut deum reconciliem mihi, quem delinquendo laesi. Sed enim illos, qui ambitu obeunt capessendi magistratus, neque pudet neque piget incommodis animae et corporis, nec incommodis tantum, verum et contumeliis omnibus eniti in causa votorum suorum. Quas non ignobilitates vestium affectant? quae non atria nocturnis et crudis salutationibus occupant? ad omnem occursum maioris cuiusque personae decrescentes, nullis conviviis celebres, nullis comessationibus congreges, sed exules a libertatis et laetitiae felicitate, idque totum propter unius anni volaticum gaudium. Nos, quod securium virgarumve petitio sustinet, in periculo aeternitatis tolerare dubitamus? et castigationem victus atque cultus offenso domino praestare cessabimus, quae gentiles nemine omnino laeso sibi irrogant? Hi sunt de quibus scriptura commemorat: Vae illis qui delicta sua velut procero fune nectunt.