Tertullian, answered from the texts and cited to the page.
I wrote the sentence, and I will not slide past it. In On the Apparel of Women I told the woman: you are each an Eve, the sentence of God on your sex lives on in this age, and the guilt must live too. You are the devil's gateway, the unsealer of the forbidden tree, the first deserter of the divine law.1 I laid the death of the Son of God at that door.1
That is the text, and I hold it as the text of a man reading Genesis as Paul read it. But see what the sentence is for. It is the ground of a counsel about ornament. If Eve, expelled and already dead, had no use for pearls and onyx and the lying mirror, then the woman who means to live again has no use for them either; they are the baggage of her condemned state, fitted out to swell the pomp of her funeral.1
And the argument does not end with woman. The angels who taught men gold and lustrous stones, eyelid-powder and the dyeing of fleeces were condemned by God, as Enoch tells us.2 Whoever delights in what they taught takes their side against the Judge. The paint on a cheek is the devil's work laid over God's, a censure of the Artificer in His own creature.3
The sharper charge of contempt for women collapses on a reading of the whole case. I do not demand squalor or slovenliness; I ask for the limit and just measure of cultivation, the line that pleases God.3 The plea that she dresses to please her husband I put to the test and found empty: a believing husband does not exact it, and an unbelieving one does not credit beauty unless it is artless.3
And the discipline falls on every servant of God alike. The man who abstains entirely, who fears even his lord's indulgence, is the better servant, for if he dreads what is lawful he will shrink the more from what is not.4 Now, the Church's right to legislate. In On the Veiling of Virgins I do not rest the veil on custom, which is only opinion grown old.
I rest it on three witnesses: Scripture founds the law, Nature joins to attest it, Discipline exacts it, and all three are God's.5 What the Church legislates is what God has already sanctioned; where Scripture is doubtful, Nature is manifest, and where Nature is doubtful, Discipline shows what God has more fully approved.5 Nothing is dearer to Him than humility or more acceptable than modesty, and nothing is more offensive than glory and the study of pleasing men.5
To the virgins themselves I do not speak as a magistrate only. Veil your head, I told them, as mother for your sons' sake, as sister for your brethren's, as daughter for your fathers'; all ages are imperilled in your person. Put on the panoply of modesty, rear a rampart for your sex.5 You are wedded to Christ, and you walk by the will of your Espoused.6
I even bring the heathen women of Arabia before the Christian wives as judges: they cover the whole face and keep one eye free, content to see rather than be seen.7 The veil is a yoke on the neck, I said, and the yoke is borne because the woman has been told who her Lord is.7 So, the answer in two parts. The sentence on Eve I wrote and I hold.
And the Church does not invent a burden; she presses on the daughters of Eve the discipline God has laid down in Scripture, in Nature, and in the rule of modesty, the same rule she presses on every man who would be a servant of Christ.
Eve's sentence stands on every daughter of Eve: she is the devil's gateway, the one who first deserted the divine law and persuaded the man. Therefore she should go in mourning, not in gold and dye, which are the arts of fallen angels and an accusation against the Creator who made her as she is. The virgin must veil, because custom is no argument against truth and because a face exposed in church invites what Eve invited.8
Yet nature is to be revered, not blushed at: the labouring woman is holy, the wife is the companion of prayer and fasting, and the harlot in the arena is a victim to be pitied before she is a sinner.9
You are the devil's gateway: you are the unsealer of that (forbidden) tree: you are the first deserter of the divine law... On account of your desert----that is, death----even the Son of God had to die.On the Apparel of Women
the self-same angels who disclosed both the material substances of this kind and their charms----of gold, I mean, and lustrous stones----and taught men how to work them... have been condemned by God, as Enoch tells usOn the Apparel of Women
These suggestions are not made to you, of course, to be developed into an entire crudity and wildness of appearance... but of the limit and norm and just measure of cultivation of the person.On the Apparel of Women
But how far more praiseworthy (the servant) who abstains entirely; who has a wholesome fear even of his lord's indulgence!On the Apparel of Women
Scripture founds the law; Nature joins to attest it; Discipline exacts it... God's is Scripture; God's is Nature; God's is Discipline.On the Veiling of Virgins
For wedded you are to Christ: to Him you have surrendered your flesh; to Him you have espoused your maturity. Walk in accordance with the will of your Espoused.On the Veiling of Virgins
Arabia's heathen females will be your judges, who cover not only the head, but the face also... the veil is their yoke.On the Veiling of Virgins
Such eyes will wish that a virgin be seen as has the virgin who shall wish to be seen. The same kinds of eyes reciprocally crave after each other. Seeing and being seen belong to the self-same lust. To blush if he see a virgin is as much a mark of a chaste man, as of a chaste virgin if seen by a man. Chapter III. ----Gradual Development of Custom, and Its Results. Passionate Appeal to Truth.On the Veiling of Virgins
Anything else I know not that they were except "born" and subsequently wedded. So perilous a face, then, ought to be shaded, which has cast stumbling-stones even so far as heaven: that, when standing in the presence of God, at whose bar it stands accused of the driving of the angels from their (native) confines, it may blush before the other angels as well; and may repress that former evil liberty of its head,----(a…On the Veiling of Virgins
The passage most quoted against him in the modern world and the one the agent must own without evasion; the texts carry both the sentence on Eve and a regard for women his reputation omits.