It is manifest from these precepts that all our
effort is to be directed towards inward joys, lest, seeking a reward from
without, we should be conformed to this world, and should lose the promise of a
blessedness so much the more solid and firm, as it is inward, in which God has
chosen that we should become conformed to the image of His Son. But in this
section it is chiefly to be noticed, that there may be ostentatious display not
merely in the splendor and pomp of things pertaining to the body, but also in
doleful squalor itself; and the more dangerous on this account, that it
deceives under the name of serving God.
And therefore he who is very conspicuous by
immoderate attention to the body, and by the splendor of his clothing or other
things, is easily convicted by the things themselves of being a follower of the
pomps of the world, and misleads no one by a cunning semblance of sanctity; but
in regard to him who under a profession of Christianity, fixes the eyes of men upon
himself by unusual squalor and filth, when he does it voluntarily, and not
under the pressure of necessity, it may be conjectured from the rest of his
actions whether he does this from contempt of superfluous attention to the
body, or from a certain ambition: for the Lord has enjoined us to beware of
wolves under a sheep's skin; but by their fruits, says He, shall you know them.
For when by temptations of any kind those very
things begin to be withdrawn from them or refused to them, which under that veil
they either have obtained or desire to obtain, then of necessity it appears
whether it is a wolf in a sheep's skin or a sheep in its own. For a Christian
ought not to delight the eyes of men by superfluous ornament on this account,
because pretenders also too often assume that frugal and merely necessary
dress, that they may deceive those who are not on their guard: for those sheep
also ought not to lay aside their own skins, if at any time wolves cover
themselves there with.
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