Re: The Early Christians: Self-Portraits and Portrayals

Women who wear gold ornaments are evidently afraid that without their 
ornaments or stripped of their jewelry they might be taken for slaves.
True 
nobility, however, is found in the beauty and substance of the soul. It 
does not recognize the slave by the price he fetches at a sale but by his 
unfree spirit. For us, what corresponds to freedom is not a mere
semblance, 
but a being free because God, who even accepted us to be his children, is 
our educator. Therefore we must attain the highest degree of freedom in
the 
way we bear ourselves at rest or in motion, in the way we walk and dress: 
in a word, in every part of life.

Clement of Alexandria, The Tutor III.11.59.

Bruderhof wrote:

> Must it not be entirely wrong to accept as good one part of what God
> has created for men’s use, but to reject another part as useless and 
> superfluous?     
> 
> Letter to Diognetus 4.
>