Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] Now we must go back and deal separately with the platform and trappings of office. Each rank has its own proper dress, both for daily use and for honor and dignity. So that purple robe, and the gold collar-piece worn at the throat, functioned among the Egyptians and the Babylonians as markers of rank in just the way that, in our own day, the bordered toga or the ceremonial robe or the palm-embroidered gown and the golden crowns of the provincial priests are — but not on the same footing. [2] For among them these were conferred, purely in the name of honor, on those who had earned the king's personal favor. Hence they were called the king's "purple-wearers," from the purple, just as among us men are called "candidates" from the white toga — but not in such a way that the platform itself was thereby bound up with priesthoods too, or with any of the services of idols. For had it been so, surely men of such holiness and constancy would at once have refused the tainted dress, and it would at once have become plain that Daniel had not abandoned the idols and did not worship Bel or the dragon — which in fact became plain only much later. [3] That purple, then, was simple, and marked among the barbarians not rank as such but free birth.
For just as Joseph, once held as a bondsman, and Daniel, whose condition through exile
had been reversed, attained citizenship in Babylon and in Egypt through the dress that marked barbarian free birth — so too, among us, believers may, if ever the need arises, grant the bordered toga to their sons and the stole to their daughters, as tokens of lineage, not of power; of family, not of honor or rank, not of superstition. But apart from that, purple and the other insignia of rank and power, being bound up from their very origin with idolatry proper to those ranks and powers, carry the stain of that profanation — all the more since the idols themselves are dressed in the bordered toga, the ceremonial robe, and the broad purple stripe, and have the rods and axes of office carried before them, and rightly so: for demons are the magistrates of this present age, and the insignia of one and the same guild are the rods and the purple they wear. [4] What, then, will you gain, if you occupy the platform but do not carry out its business? No one can appear clean amid unclean things. If you put on a garment dirty in itself, it may perhaps not be soiled by you — but you cannot stay clean by wearing it. Now, as for arguing from Joseph and Daniel: know that old things and new, rough and polished, things begun and things carried through, servile things and free things, are not always to be measured against one another. [5] For they, besides, were in the condition of slaves; you, however, are no man's slave, insofar as you belong to Christ alone, who has freed you even from the world's captivity, and you are bound to act after the pattern of your Lord. That Lord walked in lowliness and obscurity, with no fixed dwelling — "the Son of Man," he says, "has nowhere to lay his head"; he was plainly dressed, for he would not otherwise have said, "Behold, those who wear soft clothing are found in the houses of kings"; and in face and bearing he was without glory, exactly as Isaiah had foretold. [6] Given that
he claimed no authority of command even over his own followers, whom he served in the humblest way, and given that, aware of his own kingship, he pulled back from being crowned king, then he handed his followers the most complete possible model for giving up every summit and platform, be it of rank or of authority. [7] For who could have drawn more use from these than the Son of God himself? How many rods might have marched ahead of him! What purple might have draped his shoulders! What gold might have glittered on his brow! — had he not deemed this world's splendor alien, both to himself and to his people. And so, what he turned away, he cast off; what he cast off, he denounced; what he denounced, he numbered among the devil's show. For he would not have denounced it unless it belonged to someone else — and it belongs to none but the devil, since God does not own it. [8] If you have renounced the devil's show, then understand: whatever part of it you lay hold of, count it idol-worship. Take this too to heart: every authority and honor of this present age stands not merely apart from God but in open hostility to him, since it is through them that punishments have been devised against God's servants, and through them too that the penalties prepared for the impious remain unknown. 9. But your very birth and standing, too, weigh against you here as regards idolatry. Yet remedies for avoiding it cannot be lacking — and even should they be lacking, there remains that one great remedy, by which a man is made happier, not by holding office on earth, but by holding it in heaven.
XIX.