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[TRANSLATED BY THE REV. S. THELWALL.]
Ye Servants of God, about to draw near to God. that you may make
solemn consecration of yourselves to Him,(2) seek well to understand
the condition of faith, the reasons of the Truth, the laws of Christian
Discipline, which forbid among other sins of the world, the pleasures
of the public shows. Ye who have testified and confessed(3) that you
have done so already, review the subject, that there may be no sinning
whether through real or wilful ignorance. For such is the power of
earthly pleasures, that, to retain the opportunity of still partaking
of them, it contrives to prolong swilling ignorance, and bribes
knowledge into playing a dishonest part. To both things, perhaps, some
among you are allured by the views of the heathens who in this matter
are wont to press us with arguments, such as these:(1) That the
exquisite enjoyments of ear and eye we have in things external are not
in the least opposed to religion in the mind and conscience; and(2)
That surely no offence is offered to God, in any human enjoyment, by
any of our pleasures, which it is not sinful to partake of in its own
time and place, with all due honour and reverence secured to Him. But
this is precisely what we are ready to prove: That these things are not
consistent with true religion and true obedience to the true God. There
are some who imagine that Christians, a sort of people ever ready to
die, are trained into the abstinence they practise, with no other
object than that of making it less difficult to despise life, the
fastenings to it being severed as it were. They regard it as an art of
quenching all desire for that which, so far as they are concerned, they
have emptied of all that is desirable; and so it is thought to be
rather a thing of human planning and foresight, than clearly laid down
by divine command. It were a grievous thing, forsooth, for Christians,
while continuing in the enjoyment of pleasures so great, to die for
God! It is not as they say; though, if it were, even Christian
obstinacy might well give all submission to a plan so suitable, to a
rule so excellent.
Then, again, every one is ready with the argument(4) that all
things, as we teach, were created by God, and given to man for his use,
and that they must be good, as coming all from so good a source; but
that among them are found the various constituent elements of the
public shows, such as the horse, the lion, bodily strength, and musical
voice. It cannot, then, be thought that what exists by God's own
creative will is either foreign or hostile to Him; and if it is not
opposed to Him, it cannot be regarded as injurious to His worshippers,
as certainly it is not foreign to them. Beyond all doubt, too, the very
buildings connected with the places of public amusement, composed as
they are of rocks, stones, marbles, pillars, are things of God, who has
given these various things for the earth's embellishment; nay, the very
scenes are enacted under God's own heaven. How skilful a pleader seems
human wisdom to her- self, especially if she has the fear of losing any
of her delights—any of the sweet enjoyments of worldly existence! In
fact, you will find not a few whom the imperilling of their pleasures
rather than their life holds back from us. For even the weakling has no
strong dread of death as a debt he knows is due by him; while the wise
man does not look with contempt on pleasure, regarding it as a precious
gift—in fact, the one blessedness of life, whether to philosopher or
fool. Now nobody denies what nobody is ignorant of—for Nature herself
is teacher of it—that God is the Maker of the universe, and that it is
good, and that it is man's by free gift of its Maker. But having no
intimate acquaintance with the Highest, knowing Him only by natural
revelation, and not as His "friends"-afar off, and not as those who
have been brought nigh to Him—men cannot but be in ignorance alike of
what He enjoins and what He forbids in regard to the administration of
His world. They must be ignorant, too, of the hostile power which works
against Him, and perverts to wrong uses the things His hand has formed;
for you cannot know either the will or the adversary of a God you do
not know. We must not, then, consider merely by whom all things were
made, but by whom they have been perverted. We shall find out for what
use they were made at first, when we find for what they were not. There
is a vast difference between the corrupted state and that of primal
purity, just because there is a vast difference between the Creator and
the corrupter. Why, all sorts of evils, which as indubitably evils even
the heathens prohibit, and against which they guard themselves, come
from the works of God. Take, for instance, murder, whether committed by
iron, by poison, or by magical enchantments. Iron and herbs and demons
are all equally creatures of God. Has the Creator, withal, provided
these things for man's destruction? Nay, He puts His interdict on every
sort of man-killing by that one summary precept, "Thou shalt not kill."
Moreover, who but God, the Maker of the world, put in its gold, brass,
silver, ivory, wood, and all the other materials used in the
manufacture of idols? Yet has He done this that men may set up a
worship in opposition to Himself? On the contrary idolatry in His eyes
is the crowning sin. What is there offensive to God which is not God's?
But in offending Him, it ceases to be His; and in ceasing to be His, it
is in His eyes an offending thing. Man himself, guilty as he is of
every iniquity, is not only a work of God—he is His image, and yet
both in soul and body he has severed himself from his Maker. For we did
not get eyes to minister to lust, and the tongue for speaking evil
with, and ears to be the receptacle of evil speech, and the throat to
serve the vice of gluttony, and the belly to be gluttony's ally, and
the genitals for unchaste excesses, and hands for deeds of violence,
and the feet for an erring life; or was the soul placed in the body
that it might become a thought-manufactory of snares, and fraud, and
injustice? I think not; for if God, as the righteous ex-actor of
innocence, hates everything like malignity—if He hates utterly such
plotting of evil, it is clear beyond a doubt, that, of all things that
have come from His hand, He has made none to lead to works which He
condemns, even though these same works may be carried on by things of
His making; for, in fact, it is the one ground of condemnation, that
the creature misuses the creation. We, therefore, who in our knowledge
of the Lord have obtained some knowledge also of His foe—who, in our
discovery of the Creator, have at the same time laid hands upon the
great corrupter, ought neither to wonder nor to doubt that, as the
prowess of the corrupting and God-opposing angel overthrew in the
beginning the virtue of man, the work and image of God, the possessor
of the world, so he has entirely changed man's nature—created, like
his own, for perfect sinlessness—into his own state of wicked enmity
against his Maker, that in the very thing whose gift to man, but not to
him, had grieved him, he might make man guilty in God's eyes, and set
up his own supremacy.(1)
Fortified by this knowledge against heathen views, let us rather
turn to the unworthy reasonings of our own people; for the faith of
some, either too simple or too scrupulous, demands direct authority
from Scripture for giving up the shows, and holds out that the matter
is a doubtful one, because such abstinence is not clearly and in words
imposed upon God's servants. Well, we never find it expressed with the
same precision, "Thou shalt not enter circus or theatre, thou shalt not
look on combat or show;" as it is plainly laid down, "Thou shalt not
kill; thou shalt not worship an idol; thou shalt not commit adultery or
fraud."(2) But we find that that first word of David bears an this very
sort of thing: "Blessed," he says, "is the man who has not gone into
the assembly of the impious, nor stood in the way of sinners, nor sat
in the seat of scorners."(1) Though he seems to have predicted
beforehand of that just man, that he took no part in the meetings and
deliberations of the Jews, taking counsel about the slaying of our
Lord, yet divine Scripture has ever far-reaching applications: after
the immediate sense has been exhausted, in all directions it fortifies
the practice of the religious life, so that here also you have an
utterance which is not far from a plain interdicting of the shows. If
he called those few Jews an assembly of the wicked, how much more will
he so designate so vast a gathering of heathens! Are the heathens less
impious, less sinners, less enemies of Christ, than the Jews were then?
And see, too, how other things agree. For at the shows they also stand
in the way. For they call the spaces between the seats going round the
amphitheatre, and the passages which separate the people running down,
ways. The place in the curve where the matrons sit is called a chair.
Therefore, on the contrary, it holds, unblessed is he who has entered
any council of wicked men, and has stood in any way of sinners, and has
sat in any chair of scorners. We may understand a thing as spoken
generally, even when it requires a certain special interpretation to be
given to it. For some things spoken with a special reference contain in
them general truth. When God admonishes the Israelites of their duty,
or sharply reproves them, He has surely a reference to all men; when He
threatens destruction to Egypt and Ethiopia, He surely pre-condemns
every sinning nation, whatever. If, reasoning from species to genus,
every nation that sins against them is an Egypt and Ethiopia; so also,
reasoning from genus to species, with reference to the origin of shows,
every show is an assembly of the wicked.
Lest any one think that we are dealing in mere argumentative
subtleties, I shall turn to that highest authority of our "seal"
itself. When entering the water, we make profession of the Christian
faith in the words of its rule; we bear public testimony that we have
renounced the devil, his pomp, and his angels. Well, is it not in
connection with idolatry, above all, that you have the devil with his
pomp and his angels? from which, to speak. briefly—for I do not wish
to dilate—you have every unclean and wicked spirit. If, therefore, it
shall be made plain that the entire apparatus of the shows is based
upon idolatry, beyond all doubt that will carry with it the conclusion
that our renunciatory testimony in the layer of baptism has reference
to the shows, which, through their idolatry, have been given over to
the devil, and his pomp, and his angels. We shall set forth, then,
their several origins, in what nursing-places they have grown to
manhood; next the titles of some of them, by what names they are
called; then their apparatus, with what superstitions they are
observed; (then their places, to what patrons they are dedicated;) then
the arts which minister to them, to what authors they are traced. If
any of these shall be found to have had no connection with an idol-god,
it will be held as free at once from the taint of idolatry, and as not
coming within the range of our baptismal abjuration.(2)
In the matter of their origins, as these are somewhat obscure and
but little known to many among us, our investigations must go back to a
remote antiquity, and our authorities be none other than books of
heathen literature. Various authors are extant who have published works
on the subject. The origin of the games as given by them is this.
Timaeus tells us that immigrants from Asia, under the leadership of
Tyrrhenus, who, in a contest about his native kingdom, had succumbed to
his brother, settled down in Etruria. Well, among other superstitious
observances under the name of religion, they set up in their new home
public shows. The Romans, at their own request, obtain from them
skilled performers—the proper seasons—the name too, for it is said
they are called Ludi, from Lydi. And though Varro derives the name of
Ludi from Ludus, that is, from play, as they called the Luperci also
Ludii, because they ran about making sport; still that sporting of
young men belongs, in his view, to festal days and temples, and objects
of religious veneration. However, it is of little consequence the
origin of the name, when it is certain that the thing springs from
idolatry. The Liberalia, under the general designation of Ludi, clearly
declared the glory of Father Bacchus; for to Bacchus these festivities
were first consecrated by grateful peasants, in return for the boon he
conferred on them, as they say, making known the pleasures of wine.
Then the Consualia were called Ludi, and at first were in honour of
Neptune, for Neptune has the name of Consus also. Thereafter Romulus
dedicated the Equiria to Mars, though they claim the Consualia too for
Romulus, on the ground that he consecrated them to Consus, the god, as
they will have it, of counsel; of the counsel, forsooth, in which he
planned the rape of the Sabine virgins for wives to his soldiers. An
excellent counsel truly; and still I suppose reckoned just and
righteous by the Romans themselves, I may not say by God. This goes
also to taint the origin: you cannot surely hold that to be good which
has sprung from sin, from shamelessness, from violence, from hatred,
from a fratricidal founder, from a son of Mars. Even now, at the first
turning-post in the circus, there is a subterranean altar to this same
Consus, with an inscription to this effect: "Consus, great in counsel,
Mars, in battle mighty tutelar deities." The priests of the state
sacrifice at it on the nones of July; the priest of Romulus and the
Vestals on the twelfth before the Kalends of September. In addition to
this, Romulus instituted games in honor of Jupiter Feretrius on the
Tarpeian Hill, according to the statement Piso has handed down to us,
called both Tarpeian and Capitoline. After him Numa Pompilius
instituted games to Mars and Robigo (for they have also invented a
goddess of rust); then Tullus Hostilius; then Ancus Martius; and
various others in succession did the like. As to the idols in whose
honour these games were established, ample information is to be fount
in the pages of Suetonius Tranquillus. But we need say no more to prove
the accusation of idolatrous origin.
To the testimony of antiquity is added that of later games
instituted in their turn, and betraying their origin from the titles
which they bear even at the present day, in which it is imprinted as on
their very face, for what idol and for what religious object games,
whether of the one kind or the other, were designed. You have festivals
bearing the name of the great Mother(1) and Apollo of Ceres too, and
Neptune, and Jupiter Latiaris, and Flora, all celebrated for a common
end; the others have their religious origin in the birthdays and
solemnities of kings, in public successes in municipal holidays. There
are also testamentary exhibitions, in which funeral honours are
rendered to the memories of private persons; and this according to an
institution of ancient times. For from the first the "Ludi" were
regarded as of two sons, sacred and funereal, that is in honour of the
heathen deities and of the dead. But in the matter of idolatry, it
makes no difference with us under what name or title it is practised,
while it has to do with the wicked spirits whom we abjure. If it is
lawful to offer homage to the dead, it will be just as lawful to offer
it to their gods: you have the same origin in both cases; there is the
same idolatry; there is on our part the same solemn renunciation of all
idolatry.
The two kinds of public games, then, have one origin; and they
have common names, as owning the same parentage. So, too, as they are
equally tainted with the sin of idolatry, their foundress, they must
needs be like each other in their pomp. But the more ambitious
preliminary display of the circus games to which the name procession
specially belongs, is in itself the proof to whom the whole thing
appertains, in the many images the long line of statues, the chariots
of all sorts, the thrones, the crowns, the dresses. What high religious
rites besides, what sacrifices precede, come between, and follow. How
many guilds, how many priesthoods, how many offices are set astir, is
known to the inhabitants of the great city in which the demon
convention has its headquarters. If these things are done in humbler
style in the provinces, in accordance with their inferior means, still
all circus games must be counted as belonging to that from which they
are derived; the fountain from which they spring defiles them. The tiny
streamlet from its very spring-head, the little twig from its very
budding, contains in it the essential nature of its origin. It may be
grand or mean, no matter, any circus procession whatever is offensive
to God. Though there be few images to grace it, there is idolatry in
one; though there be no more than a single sacred car, it is a chariot
of Jupiter: anything of idolatry whatever, whether meanly arrayed or
modestly rich and gorgeous, taints it in its origin.
To follow out my plan in regard to places: the circus is chiefly
consecrated to the Sun, whose temple stands in the middle of it, and
whose image shines forth from its temple summit; for they have not
thought it proper to pay sacred honours underneath a roof to an object
they have itself in open space. Those who assert that the first
spectacle was exhibited by Circe, and in honour of the Sun her father,
as they will have it, maintain also the name of circus was derived from
her. Plainly, then, the enchantress did this in the name of the parties
whose priestess she was—I mean the demons and spirits of evil. What an
aggregation of idolatries you see, accordingly, in the decoration of
the place! Every ornament of the circus is a temple by itself. The eggs
are regarded as sacred to the Castors, by men who are not ashamed to
profess faith in their production from the egg of a swan, which was no
other than Jupiter himself. The Dolphins vomit forth in honour of
Neptune. Images of Sessia, so called as the goddess of sowing; of
Messia, so called as the goddess of reaping; of Tutulina, so called as
the fruit-protecting deity—load the pillars. In front of these you
have three altars to these three gods—Great, Mighty, Victorious. They
reckon these of Samo-Thrace. The huge Obelisk, as Hermeteles affirms,
is set up in public to the Sun; its inscription, like its origin,
belongs to Egyptian superstition. Cheerless were the demon-gathering
without their Mater Magna; and so she presides there over the Euripus.
Consus, as we have mentioned, lies hidden under ground at the Murcian
Goals. These two sprang from an idol. For they will have it that Murcia
is the goddess of love; and to her, at that spot, they have consecrated
a temple. See, Christian, how many impure names have taken possession
of the circus! You have nothing to do with a sacred place which is
tenanted by such multitudes of diabolic spirits. And speaking of
places, this is the suitable occasion for some remarks in anticipation
of a point that some will raise. What, then, you say; shall I be in
danger of pollution if I go to the circus when the games are not being
celebrated? There is no law forbidding the mere places to us. For not
only the places for show-gatherings, but even the temples, may be
entered without any peril of his religion by the servant of God, if he
has only some honest reason for it, unconnected with their proper
business and official duties. Why, even the streets and the
market-place, and the baths, and the taverns, and our very
dwelling-places, are not altogether free from idols. Satan and his
angels have filled the whole world. It is not by merely being in the
world, however, that we lapse from God, but by touching and tainting
ourselves with the world's sins. I shall break with my Maker, that is,
by going to the Capitol or the temple of Serapis to sacrifice or adore,
as I shall also do by going as a spectator to the circus and the
theatre. The places in themselves do not contaminate, but what is done
in them; from this even the places themselves, we maintain, become
defiled. The polluted things pollute us. It is on this account that we
set before you to whom places of the kind are dedicated, that we may
prove the things which are done in them to belong to the idol-patrons
to whom the very places are sacred.(1)
Now as to the kind of performances peculiar to the circus
exhibitions. In former days equestrianism was practised in a simple way
on horseback, and certainly its ordinary use had nothing sinful in it;
but when it was dragged into the games, it passed from the service of
God into the employment of demons. Accordingly this kind of circus
performances is regarded as sacred to Castor and Pollux, to whom,
Stesichorus tells us, horses were given by Mercury. And Neptune, too,
is an equestrian deity, by the Greeks called Hippius. In regard to the
team, they have consecrated the chariot and four to the sun; the
chariot and pair to the moon. But, as the poet has it, "Erichthonius
first dared to yoke four horses to the chariot, and to ride upon its
wheels with victorious swiftness." Erichthonius, the son of Vulcan and
Minerva, fruit of unworthy passion upon earth, is a demon-monster, nay,
the devil himself, and no mere snake. But if Trochilus the Argive is
maker of the first chariot, he dedicated that work of his to Juno. If
Romulus first exhibited the four-horse chariot at Rome, he too, I
think, has a place given him among idols, at least if he and Quirinus
are the same. But as chariots had such inventors, the charioteers were
naturally dressed, too, in the colours of idolatry; for at first these
were only two, namely white and red,—the former sacred to the winter
with its glistening snows, the latter sacred to the summer with its
ruddy sun: but afterwards, in the progress of luxury as well as of
superstition, red was dedicated by some to Mars, and white by others to
the Zephyrs, while green was given to Mother Earth, or spring, and
azure to the sky and sea, or autumn. But as idolatry of every kind is
condemned by God, that form of it surely shares the condemnation which
is offered to the elements of nature.
Let us pass on now to theatrical exhibitions, which we have
already shown have a common. origin with the circus, and bear like
idolatrous designations—even as from the first they have borne the
name of "Ludi," and equally minister to idols. They resemble each other
also in their pomp, having the same procession to the scene of their
display from temples and altars, and that mournful profusion of incense
and blood, with music of pipes and trumpets, all under the direction of
the soothsayer and the undertaker, those two foul masters of funeral
rites and sacrifices. So as we went on from the origin of the "Ludi" to
the circus games, we shall now direct our course thence to those of the
theatre, beginning with the place of exhibition. At first the theatre
was properly a temple of Venus; and, to speak briefly, it was owing to
this that stage performances were allowed to escape censure, and got a
footing in the world. For ofttimes the censors, in the interests of
morality, put down above all the rising theatres, foreseeing, as they
did, that there was great danger of their leading to a general
profligacy; so that already, from this accordance of their own people
with us, there is a witness to the heathen, and in the anticipatory
judgment of human knowledge even a confirmation of our views.
Accordingly Pompey the Great, less only than his theatre, when he had
erected that citadel of all impurities, fearing some time or other
censorian condemnation of his memory, superposed on it a temple of
Venus; and summoning by public proclamation the people to its
consecration, he called it not a theatre, but a temple, "under which,"
said he, "we have placed tiers of seats for viewing the shows." So he
threw a veil over a structure on which condemnation had been often
passed, and which is ever to be held in reprobation, by pretending that
it was a sacred place; and by means of superstition he blinded the eyes
of a virtuous discipline. But Venus and Bacchus are close allies. These
two evil spirits are in sworn confederacy with each other, as the
patrons of drunkenness and lust. So the theatre of Venus is as well the
house of Bacchus: for they properly gave the name of Liberalia also to
other theatrical amusements—which besides being consecrated to Bacchus
(as were the Dionysia of the Greeks), were instituted by him; and,
without doubt, the performances of the theatre have the common
patronage of these two deities. That immodesty of gesture and attire
which so specially and peculiarly characterizes the stage are
consecrated to them—the one deity wanton by her sex, the other by his
drapery; while its services of voice, and song, and lute, and pipe,
belong to Apollos, and Muses, and Minervas, and Mercuries. You will
hate, O Christian, the things whose authors must be the objects of your
utter detestation. So we would now make a remark about the arts of the
theatre, about the things also whose authors in the names we execrate.
We know that the names of the dead are nothing, as are their images;
but we know well enough, too, who, when images are set up, under these
names carry on their wicked work, and exult in the homage rendered to
them, and pretend to be divine—none other than spirits accursed, than
devils. We see, therefore, that the arts also are consecrated to the
service of the beings who dwell in the names of their founders; and
that things cannot be held free from the taint of idolatry whose
inventors have got a place among the gods for their discoveries. Nay,
as regards the arts, we ought to have gone further back, and barred all
further argument by the position that the demons, predetermining in
their own interests from the first, among other evils of idolatry, the
pollutions of the public shows, with the object of drawing man away
from his Lord and binding him to their own service, carried out their
purpose by bestowing on him the artistic gifts which the shows require.
For none but themselves would have made provision and preparation for
the objects they had in view; nor would they have given the arts to the
world by any but those in whose names, and images, and histories they
set up for their own ends the artifice of consecration.
In fulfilment of our plan, let us now go on to consider the
combats. Their origin is akin to that of the games (ludi). Hence they
are kept as either sacred or funereal, as they have been instituted in
honour of the idol-gods of the nations or of the dead. Thus, too, they
are called Olympian in honour of Jupiter, known at Rome as the
Capitoline; Nemean, in honour of Hercules; Isthmian, in honour of
Neptune; the rest mortuarii, as belonging to the dead. What wonder,
then, if idolatry pollutes the combat-parade with profane crowns, with
sacerdotal chiefs, with attendants belonging to the various colleges,
last of all with the blood of its sacrifices? To add a completing word
about the "place"—in the common place for the college of the arts
sacred to the Muses, and Apollo, and Minerva, and also for that of the
arts dedicated to Mars, they with contest and sound of trumpet emulate
the circus in the arena, which is a real temple—I mean of the god
whose festivals it celebrates. The gymnastic arts also originated with
their Castors, and Herculeses, and Mercuries.
It remains for us to examine the "spectacle" most noted of all,
and in highest favour. It is called a dutiful service (munus), from its
being an office, for it bears the name of "officium" as well as
"munus." The ancients thought that in this solemnity they rendered
offices to the dead; at a later period, with a cruelty more refined,
they somewhat modified its character. For formerly, in the belief that
the souls of the departed were appeased by human blood, they were in
the habit of buying captives or slaves of wicked disposition, and
immolating them in their funeral obsequies. Afterwards they thought
good to throw the veil of pleasure over their iniquity.(1) Those,
therefore, whom they had provided for the combat, and then trained in
arms as best they could, only that they might learn to die, they, on
the funeral day, killed at the places of sepulture. They alleviated
death by murders. Such is the origin of the "Munus." But by degrees
their refinement came up to their cruelty; for these human wild beasts
could not find pleasure exquisite enough, save in the spectacle of men
torn to pieces by wild beasts. Offerings to propitiate the dead then
were regarded as belonging to the class of funeral sacrifices; and
these are idolatry: for idolatry, in fact, is a sort of homage to the
departed; the one as well as the other is a service to dead men.
Moreover, demons have abode in the images of the dead. To refer also to
the matter of names, though this sort of exhibition has passed from
honours of the dead to honours of the living, I mean, to quaestorships
and magistracies—to priestly offices of different kinds; yet, since
idolatry still cleaves to the dignity's name, whatever is done in its
name partakes of its impurity. The same remark will apply to the
procession of the "Munus," as we look at that in the pomp which is
connected with these honours themselves; for the purple robes, the
fasces, the fillets the crowns, the proclamations too, and edicts, the
sacred feasts of the day before, are not without the pomp of the devil,
without invitation of demons. What need, then, of dwelling on the place
of horrors, which is too much even for the tongue of the perjurer? For
the amphitheatre(2) is consecrated to names more numerous and more
dire(3) than is the Capitol itself, temple of all demons as it is.
There are as many unclean spirits there as it holds men. To conclude
with a single remark about the arts which have a place in it, we know
that its two sorts of amusement have for their patrons Mars and Diana.
We have, I think, faithfully carried out our plan of showing in
how many different ways the sin of idolatry clings to the shows, in
respect of their origins, their titles, their equipments, their places
of celebration, their arts; and we may hold it as a thing beyond all
doubt, that for us who have twice(4) renounced all idols, they are
utterly unsuitable. "Not that an idol is anything,"(5) as the apostle
says, but that the homage they render is to demons, who are the real
occupants of these consecrated images, whether of dead men or (as they
think) of gods. On this account, therefore, because they have a common
source—for their dead and their deities are one—we abstain from both
idolatries. Nor do we dislike the temples less than the monuments: we
have nothing to do with either altar, we adore neither image; we do not
offer sacrifices to the gods, and we make no funeral oblations to the
departed; nay, we do not partake of what is offered either in the one
case or the other, for we cannot partake of God's feast and the feast
of devils.(6) If, then, we keep throat and belly free from such
defilements, how much more do we withhold our nobler parts, our ears
and eyes, from the idolatrous and funereal enjoyments, which are not
passed through the body, but are digested in the very spirit and soul,
whose purity, much more than that of our bodily organs, God has a right
to claim from us.
Having sufficiently established the charge of idolatry, which
alone ought to be reason enough for our giving up the shows, let us now
ex abundanti look at the subject in another way, for the sake of those
especially who keep themselves comfortable in the thought that the
abstinence we urge is not in so many words enjoined, as if in the
condemnation of the lusts of the world there was not involved a
sufficient declaration against all these amusements. For as there is a
lust of money, or rank, or eating, or impure enjoyment, or glory, so
there is also a lust of pleasure. But the show is just a sort of
pleasure. I think, then, that under the general designation of lusts,
pleasures are included; in like manner, under the general idea of
pleasures, you have as a specific class the "shows." But we have spoken
already of how it is with the places of exhibition, that they are not
polluting in themselves, but owing to the things that are done in them
from which they imbibe impurity, and then spirt it again on others.
Having done enough, then, as we have said, in regard to that
principal argument, that there is in them all the taint of
idolatry—having sufficiently dealt with that, let us now contrast the
other characteristics of the show with the things of God. God has
enjoined us to deal calmly, gently, quietly, and peacefully with the
Holy Spirit, because these things are alone in keeping with the
goodness of His nature, with His tenderness and sensitiveness, and not
to vex Him with rage, ill-nature, anger, or grief. Well, how shall this
be made to accord with the shows? For the show always leads to
spiritual agitation, since where there is pleasure, there is keenness
of feeling giving pleasure its zest; and where there is keenness of
feeling, there is rivalry giving in turn its zest to that. Then, too,
where you have rivalry, you have rage, bitterness, wrath and grief,
with all bad things which flow from them—the whole entirely out of
keeping with the religion of Christ. For even suppose one should enjoy
the shows in a moderate way, as befits his rank, age or nature, still
he is not undisturbed in mind, without some unuttered movings of the
inner man. No one partakes of pleasures such as these without their
strong excitements; no one comes under their excitements without their
natural lapses. These lapses, again, create passionate desire. If there
is no desire, there is no pleasure, and he is chargeable with trifling
who goes where nothing is gotten; in my view, even that is foreign to
us. Moreover, a man pronounces his own condemnation in the very act of
taking his place among those with whom, by his disinclination to be
like them, he confesses he has no sympathy. It is not enough that we do
no such things ourselves, unless we break all connection also with
those who do. "If thou sawest a thief," says the Scripture, "thou
consentedst with him."(1) Would that we did not even inhabit the same
world with these wicked men! But though that wish cannot be realized,
yet even now we are separate from them in what is of the world; for the
world is God's, but the worldly is the devil's.
Since, then, all passionate excitement is forbidden us, we are
debarred from every kind of spectacle, and especially from the circus,
where such excitement presides as in its proper element. See the people
coming to it already under strong emotion, already tumultuous, already
passion-blind, already agitated about their bets. The praetor is too
slow for them: their eyes are ever rolling as though along with the
lots in his urn; then they hang all eager on the signal; there is the
united shout of a common madness. Observe how "out of themselves" they
are by their foolish speeches. "He has thrown it!" they exclaim; and
they announce each one to his neighbour what all have seen. I have
clearest evidence of their blindness; they do not see what is really
thrown. They think it a "signal cloth," but it is the likeness of the
devil cast headlong from on high. And the result accordingly is, that
they fly into rages, and passions, and discords, and all that they who
are consecrated to peace ought never to indulge in. Then there are
curses and reproaches, with no cause of hatred; there are cries of
applause, with nothing to merit them. What are the partakers in all
this—not their own masters—to obtain of it for themselves? unless, it
may be, that which makes them not their own: they are saddened by
another's sorrow, they are gladdened by another's joy. Whatever they
desire on the one hand, or detest on the other, is entirely foreign to
themselves. So love with them is a useless thing, and hatred is unjust.
Or is a causeless love perhaps more legitimate than a causeless hatred?
God certainly forbids us to hate even with a reason for our hating; for
He commands us to love our enemies. God forbids us to curse, though
there be some ground for doing so, in commanding that those who curse
us we are to bless. But what is more merciless than the circus, where
people do not spare even their rulers and fellow-citizens? If any of
its madnesses are becoming elsewhere in the saints of God, they will be
seemly in the circus too; but if they are nowhere right, so neither are
they there.
Are we not, in like manner, enjoined to put away from us all
immodesty? On this ground, again, we are excluded from the theatre,
which is immodesty's own peculiar abode, where nothing is in repute but
what elsewhere is disreputable. So the best path to the highest favour
of its god is the vileness which the Atellan(1) gesticulates, which the
buffoon in woman's clothes exhibits, destroying all natural modesty, so
that they blush more readily at home than at the play, which finally is
done from his childhood on the person of the pantomime, that he may
become an actor. The very harlots, too, victims of the public lust, are
brought upon the stage, their misery increased as being there in the
presence of their own sex, from whom alone they are wont to hide
themselves: they are paraded publicly before every age and every
rank—their abode, their gains, their praises, are set forth, and that
even in the hearing of those who should not hear such things. I say
nothing about other matters, which it were good to hide away in their
own darkness and their own gloomy caves, lest they should stain the
light of day. Let the Senate, let all ranks, blush for very shame! Why,
even these miserable women, who by their own gestures destroy their
modesty, dreading the light of day, and the people's gaze, know
something of shame at least once a year. But if we ought to abominate
all that is immodest, on what ground is it right to hear what we must
not speak? For all licentiousness of speech, nay, every idle word, is
condemned by God. Why, in the same way, is it right to look on what it
is disgraceful to do? How is it that the things which defile a man in
going out of his mouth, are not regarded as doing so when they go in at
his eyes and ears—when eyes and ears are the immediate attendants on
the spirit—and that can never be pure whose servants-in-waiting are
impure? You have the theatre forbidden, then, in the forbidding of
immodesty. If, again, we despise the teaching of secular literature as
being foolishness in God's eyes, our duty is plain enough in regard to
those spectacles, which from this source derive the tragic or comic
play. If tragedies and comedies are the bloody and wanton, the impious
and licentious inventors of crimes and lusts, it is not good even that
there should be any calling to remembrance the atrocious or the vile.
What you reject in deed, you are not to bid welcome to in word.
But if you argue that the racecourse is mentioned in Scripture, I
grant it at once. But you will not refuse to admit that the things
which are done there are not for you to look upon: the blows, and
kicks, and cuffs, and all the recklessness of hand, and everything like
that disfiguration of the human countenance, which is nothing less than
the disfiguration of God's own image. You will never give your approval
to those foolish racing and throwing feats, and yet more foolish
leapings; you will never find pleasure in injurious or useless
exhibitions of strength; certainly you will not regard with approval
those efforts after an artificial body which aim at surpassing the
Creator's work; and you will have the very opposite of complacency in
the athletes Greece, in the inactivity of peace, feeds up. And the
wrestler's art is a devil's thing. The devil wrestled with, and crushed
to death, the first human beings. Its very attitude has power in it of
the serpent kind, firm to hold—tortures to clasp—slippery to glide
away. You have no need of crowns; why do you strive to get pleasures
from crowns?
We shall now see how the Scriptures condemn the amphitheatre. If
we can maintain that it is right to indulge in the cruel, and the
impious, and the fierce, let us go there. If we are what we are said to
be, let us regale ourselves there with human blood. It is good, no
doubt, to have the guilty punished. Who but the criminal himself will
deny that? And yet the innocent can find no pleasure in another's
sufferings: he rather mourns that a brother has sinned so heinously as
to need a punishment so dreadful. But who is my guarantee that it is
always the guilty who are adjudged to the wild beasts, or to some other
doom, and that the guiltless never suffer from the revenge of the
judge, or the weakness of the defence, or the pressure of the rack? How
much better, then, is it for me to remain ignorant of the punishment
inflicted on the wicked, lest I am obliged to know also of the good
coming to untimely ends—if I may speak of goodness in the case at all!
At any rate, gladiators not chargeable with crime are offered in sale
for the games, that they may become the victims of the public pleasure.
Even in the case of those who are judicially condemned to the
amphitheatre, what a monstrous thing it is, that, in undergoing their
punishment, they, from some less serious delinquency, advance to the
criminality of manslayers! But I mean these remarks for heathen. As to
Christians, I shall not insult them by adding another word as to the
aversion with which they should regard this sort of exhibition; though
no one is more able than myself to set forth fully the whole subject,
unless it be one who is still in the habit of going to the shows. I
would rather withal be incomplete than set memory a-working.(1)
How vain, then—nay, how desperate—is the reasoning of persons,
who, just because they decline to lose a pleasure, hold out that we
cannot point to the specific words or the very place where this
abstinence is mentioned, and where the servants of God are directly
forbidden to have anything to do with such assemblies! I heard lately a
novel defence of himself by a certain play-lover. "The sun," said he,
"nay, God Himself, looks down from heaven on the show, and no pollution
is contracted." Yes, and the sun, too, pours down his rays into the
common sewer without being defiled. As for God, would that all crimes
were hid from His eye, that we might all escape judgment! But He looks
on robberies too; He looks on falsehoods, adulteries, frauds,
idolatries, and these same shows; and precisely on that account we will
not look on them, lest the All-seeing see us. You are putting on the
same level, O man, the criminal and the judge; the criminal who is a
criminal because he is seen, and the Judge who is a Judge because He
sees. Are we set, then, on playing the madman outside the circus
boundaries? Outside the gates of the theatre are we bent on lewdness,
outside the course on arrogance, and outside the amphitheatre on
cruelty, because outside the porticoes, the tiers and the curtains,
too, God has eyes? Never and nowhere is that free from blame which God
ever condemns; never and nowhere is it right to do what you may not do
at all times and in all places. It is the freedom of the truth from
change of opinion and varying judgments which constitutes its
perfection, and gives it its claims to full mastery, unchanging
reverence, and faithful obedience. That which is really good or really
evil cannot be ought else. But in all things the truth of God is
immutable.
The heathen, who have not a full revelation of the truth, for
they are not taught of God, hold a thing evil and good as it suits
self-will and passion, making that which is good in one place evil in
another, and that which is evil in one place in another good. So it
strangely happens, that the same man who can scarcely in public lift up
his tunic, even when necessity of nature presses him, takes it off in
the circus, as if bent on exposing himself before everybody; the father
who carefully protects and guards his virgin daughter's ears from every
polluting word, takes her to the theatre himself, exposing her to all
its vile words and attitudes; he, again, who in the streets lays hands
on or covers with reproaches the brawling pugilist, in the arena gives
all encouragement to combats of a much more serious kind; and he who
looks with horror on the corpse of one who has died under the common
law of nature, in the amphitheatre gazes down with most patient eyes on
bodies all mangled and torn and smeared with their own blood; nay, the
very man who comes to the show, because he thinks murderers ought to
suffer for their crime, drives the unwilling gladiator to the murderous
deed with rods and scourges; and one who demands the lion for every
manslayer of deeper dye, will have the staff for the savage swordsman,
and rewards him with the cap of liberty. Yes and he must have the poor
victim back again, that he may get a sight of his face—with zest
inspecting near at hand the man whom he wished torn in pieces at safe
distance from him: so much the more cruel he if that was not his wish.
What wonder is there in it? Such inconsistencies as these are
just such as we might expect from men, who confuse and change the
nature of good and evil in their inconstancy of feeling and fickleness
in judgment. Why, the authors and managers of the spectacles, in that
very respect with reference to which they highly laud the charioteers,
and actors, and wrestlers, and those most loving gladiators, to whom
men prostitute their souls, women too their bodies, slight and trample
on them, though for their sakes they are guilty of the deeds they
reprobate; nay, they doom them to ignominy and the loss of their rights
as citizens, excluding them from the Curia, and the rostra, from
senatorial and equestrian rank, and from all other honours as well as
certain distinctions. What perversity! They have pleasure in those whom
yet they punish; they put all slights on those to whom, at the same
time, they award their approbation; they magnify the art and brand the
artist. What an outrageous thing it is, to blacken a man on account of
the very things which make him meritorious in their eyes! Nay, what a
confession that the things are evil, when their authors, even in
highest favour, are not without a mark of disgrace upon them!
Seeing, then, man's own reflections, even in spite of the
sweetness of pleasure, lead him to think that people such as these
should be condemned to a hapless lot of infamy, losing all the
advantages connected with the possession of the dignities of life, how
much more does the divine righteousness inflict punishment on those who
give themselves to these arts! Will God have any pleasure in the
charioteer who disquiets so many souls, rouses up so many furious
passions, and creates so many various moods, either crowned like a
priest or wearing the colours of a pimp,decked out by the devil that he
may be whirled away in his chariot, as though with the object of taking
off Elijah? Will He be pleased with him who applies the razor to
himself, and completely changes his features; who, with no respect for
his face, is not content with making it as like as possible to Saturn
and Isis and Bacchus, but gives it quietly over to contumelious blows,
as if in mockery of our Lord? The devil, forsooth, makes it part, too,
of his teaching, that the cheek is to be meekly offered to the smiter.
In the same way, with their high shoes, he has made the tragic actors
taller, because "none can add a cubit to his stature."(1) His desire is
to make Christ a liar. And in regard to the wearing of masks, I ask is
that according to the mind of God, who forbids the making of every
likeness, and especially then the likeness of man who is His own image?
The Author of truth hates all the false; He regards as adultery all
that is unreal. Condemning, therefore, as He does hypocrisy in every
form, He never will approve any putting on of voice, or sex, or age; He
never will approve pretended loves, and wraths, and groans, and tears.
Then, too, as in His law it is declared that the man is cursed who
attires himself in female garments,(2) what must be His judgment of the
pantomime, who is even brought up to play the woman ! And will the
boxer go unpunished? I suppose he received these caestus-scars, and the
thick skin of his fists, and these growths upon his ears, at his
creation! God, too, gave him eyes for no other end than that they might
be knocked out in fighting! I say nothing of him who, to save himself,
thrusts another in the lion's way, that he may not be too little of a
murderer when he puts to death that very same man on the arena.
In how many other ways shall we yet further
show that nothing which is peculiar to the shows has God's approval, or without that approval is becoming in God's servants? If we have succeeded in making it plain that they were instituted entirely for the devil's sake, and have been got up entirely with the devil's things (for all that is not God's, or is not pleasing in His eyes, belongs to His wicked rival), this simply means that in them you have that pomp of the devil which in the "seal" of our faith we abjure. We should have no connection with the things which, we abjure, whether in deed or word, whether by looking on them or looking forward to them; but do we not abjure and rescind that baptismal pledge, when we cease to bear its testimony? Does it then remain for us to apply to the heathen themselves. Let them tell us, then, whether it is right in Christians to frequent the show. Why, the rejection of these amusements is the chief sign to them that a man has adopted the Christian faith. If any one, then, puts away the faith's distinctive badge, he is plainly guilty of denying it. What hope can you possibly retain in regard to a man who does that? When you go over to the enemy's camp, you throw down your arms, desert the standards and the oath of allegiance to your chief: you cast in your lot for life or death with your new friends.
Seated where there is nothing of God, will one be thinking of his
Maker? Will there be peace in his soul when there is eager strife there
for a charioteer? Wrought up into a frenzied excitement, will he learn
to be modest? Nay, in the whole thing he will meet with no greater
temptation than that gay attiring of the men and women. The very
intermingling of emotions, the very agreements and disagreements with
each other in the bestowment of their favours, where you have such
close communion, blow up the sparks of passion. And then there is
scarce any other object in going to the show, but to see and to be
seen. When a tragic actor is declaiming, will one be giving thought to
prophetic appeals? Amid the measures of the effeminate player, will he
call up to himself a psalm? And when the athletes are hard at struggle,
will he be ready to proclaim that there must be no striking again? And
with his eye fixed on the bites of bears, and the sponge-nets of the
net-fighters, can he be moved by compassion? May God avert from His
people any such passionate eagerness after a cruel enjoyment! For how
monstrous it is to go from God's church to the devil's—from the sky to
the stye,(1) as they say; to raise your hands to God, and then to weary
them in the applause of an actor; out of the mouth, from which you
uttered Amen over the Holy Thing, to give witness in a gladiator's
favour; to cry "forever" to any one else but God and Christ!
Why may not those who go into the temptations of the show become
accessible also to evil spirits? We have the case of the woman—the
Lord Himself is witness—who went to the theatre, and came back
possessed. In the outcasting,(2) accordingly, when the unclean creature
was upbraided with having dared to attack a believer, he firmly
replied,(3) "And in truth I did it most righteously, for I found her in
my domain." Another case, too, is well known, in which a woman had been
hearing a tragedian, and on the very night she saw in her sleep a linen
cloth—the actor's name being mentioned at the same time with strong
disapproval—and five days after that woman was no more. How many other
undoubted proofs we have had in the case of persons who, by keeping
company with the devil in the shows, have fallen from the Lord! For no
one can serve two masters.(4) What fellowship has light with darkness,
life with death?(5)
We ought to detest these heathen meetings and assemblies, if on
no other account than that there God's name is blasphemed—that there
the cry "To the lions!" is daily raised against us(6)—that from thence
persecuting decrees are wont to emanate, and temptations are sent
forth. What will you do if you are caught in that heaving tide of
impious judgments? Not that there any harm is likely to come to you
from men: nobody knows that you are a Christian; but think how it fares
with you in heaven. For at the very time the devil is working havoc in
the church, do you doubt that the angels are looking down from above,
and marking every man, who speaks and who listens to the blaspheming
word, who lends his tongue and who lends his ears to the service of
Satan against God? Shall you not then shun those tiers where the
enemies of Christ assemble, that seat of all that is pestilential, and
the very super incumbent atmosphere all impure with wicked cries? Grant
that you have there things that are pleasant, things both agreeable and
innocent in themselves; even some things that are excellent. Nobody
dilutes poison with gall and hellebore: the accursed thing is put into
condiments well seasoned and of sweetest taste. So, too, the devil puts
into the deadly draught which he prepares, things of God most pleasant
and most acceptable. Everything there, then, that is either brave,
noble, loud-sounding, melodious, or exquisite in taste, hold it but as
the honey drop of a poisoned cake; nor make so much of your taste for
its pleasures, as of the danger you run from its attractions.
With such dainties as these let the devil's guests be feasted.
The places and the times, the inviter too, are theirs. Our banquets,
our nuptial joys, are yet to come. We cannot sit down in fellowship
with them, as neither can they with us. Things in this matter go by
their turns. Now they have gladness and we are troubled. "The world,"
says Jesus, "shall rejoice; ye shall be sorrowful."(7) Let us mourn,
then, while the heathen are merry, that in the day of their sorrow we
may rejoice; lest, sharing now in their gladness, we share then also in
their grief. Thou art too dainty, Christian, if thou wouldst have
pleasure in this life as well as in the next; nay, a fool thou art, if
thou thinkest this life's pleasures to be really pleasures. The
philosophers, for instance, give the name of pleasure to quietness and
repose; in that they have their bliss; in that they find entertainment:
they even glory in it. You long for the goal, and the stage, and the
dust, and the place of combat! I would have you answer me this
question: Can we not live without pleasure, who cannot but with
pleasure die? For what is our wish but the apostle's, to leave the
world, and be taken up into the fellowship of our Lord?(8) You have
your joys where you have your longings.
Even as things are, if your thought is to spend this period of
existence in enjoyments, how are you so ungrateful as to reckon
insufficient, as not thankfully to recognize the many and exquisite
pleasures God has bestowed upon you? For what more delightful than to
have God the Father and our Lord at peace with us, than revelation of
the truth than confession of our errors, than pardon of the innumerable
sins of our past life? What greater pleasure than distaste of pleasure
itself, contempt of all that the world can give, true liberty, a pure
conscience, a contented life, and freedom from all fear of death? What
nobler than to tread under foot the gods of the nations—to exorcise
evil spirits(1)—to perform cures—to seek divine revealings—to live
to God? These are the pleasures, these the spectacles that befit
Christian men—holy, everlasting, free. Count of these as your circus
games, fix your eyes on the courses of the world, the gliding seasons,
reckon up the periods of time, long for the goal of the final
consummation, defend the societies of the churches, be startled at
God's signal, be roused up at the angel's trump, glory in the palms of
martyrdom. If the literature of the stage delight you, we have
literature in abundance of our own—plenty of verses, sentences, songs,
proverbs; and these not fabulous, but true; not tricks of art, but
plain realities. Would you have also fightings and wrestlings? Well, of
these there is no lacking, and they are not of slight account. Behold
unchastity overcome by chastity, perfidy slain by faithfulness, cruelty
stricken by compassion, impudence thrown into the shade by modesty:
these are the contests we have among us, and in these we win our
crowns. Would you have something of blood too? You have Christ's.
But what a spectacle is that fast-approaching advent(2) of our
Lord, now owned by all, now highly exalted, now a triumphant One! What
that exultation of the angelic hosts! What the glory of the rising
saints! What the kingdom of the just thereafter! What the city New
Jerusalem!(3) Yes, and there are other sights: that last day of
judgment, with its everlasting issues; that day unlooked for by the
nations, the theme of their derision, when the world hoary with age,
and all its many products, shall be consumed in one great flame! How
vast a spectacle then bursts upon the eye! What there excites my
admiration? what my derision? Which sight gives me joy? which rouses me
to exultation?—as I see so many illustrious monarchs, whose reception
into the heavens was publicly announced, groaning now in the lowest
darkness with great Jove himself, and those, too, who bore witness of
their exultation; governors of provinces, too, who persecuted the
Christian name, in fires more fierce than those with which in the days
of their pride they raged against the followers of Christ. What world'
s wise men besides, the very philosophers, in fact, who taught their
followers that God had no concern in ought that is sublunary, and were
wont to assure them that either they had no souls, or that they would
never return to the bodies which at death they had left, now covered
with shame before the poor deluded ones, as one fire consumes them!
Poets also, trembling not before the judgment-seat of Rhadamanthus or
Minos, but of the unexpected Christ! I shall have a better opportunity
then of hearing the tragedians, louder-voiced in their own calamity; of
viewing the play-actors, much more "dissolute" in the dissolving flame;
of looking upon the charioteer, all glowing in his chariot of fire; of
beholding the wrestlers, not in their gymnasia, but tossing in the
fiery billows; unless even then I shall not care to attend to such
ministers of sin, in my eager wish rather to fix a gaze insatiable on
those whose fury vented itself against the Lord. "This," I shall say,
"this is that carpenter's or hireling's son, that Sabbath-breaker, that
Samaritan and devil-possessed! This is He whom you purchased from
Judas! This is He whom you struck with reed and fist, whom you
contemptuously spat upon, to whom you gave gall and vinegar to drink!
This is He whom His disciples secretly stole away, that it might be
said He had risen again, or the gardener abstracted, that his lettuces
might come to no harm from the crowds of visitants!" What quaestor or
priest in his munificence will bestow on you the favour of seeing and
exulting in such things as these? And yet even now we in a measure
have them by faith in the picturings of imagination. But what are the
things which eye has not seen, ear has not heard, and which have not so
much as dimly dawned upon the human heart? Whatever they are, they are
nobler, I believe, than circus, and both theatres,(4) and every
race-course.