Just as boundary-markers set upon estates proclaim their owner, so the very names of the saints often indicate their merits and bear witness to their distinctions. Thus Abraham showed by the alteration of his name that he had believed by faith, when from Abram he was called Abraham by God: so that he who was to be enlarged in his lineage might first be enlarged in name, as the Lord said: And thy name shall no more be called Abram, but Abraham shall be thy name, because I have made thee a father of many nations (Gen. xvii). So his holy wife, when from barren she became fruitful, was called Sarah instead of Sarai, that she too might grow in name before she grew in offspring;
and because, by the Lord's permission, she gave forth laughter—if an old woman already furrowed with wrinkles should conceive, if a fecundity already despaired of should bear, if a barrenness now at the very extremity of old age should become pregnant—she straightway named laughter that which she brought forth; and this she fitted to the name, that which she experienced in her feeling when she laughed: And she called his name Isaac, which is interpreted 'laughter' (Gen. xxi). So Jacob, who in the womb began to wrestle before to see, to overcome by strength before by limbs, even among his mother's inward parts obtained the very name of 'supplanter,' because before he was born he is known to have supplanted, by divine appointment, his reprobated brother (Gen. xxv).
And because it is a long task to go through each one—just as Peter obtained his name from the rock (petra), because he first merited to found the Church by the firmness of faith; so Stephen was named from the crown (corona), because he first merited to undergo combat for Christ's name, he first merited to consecrate martyrdom by the blood of Christ's soldiery. Let Peter hold the ancient primacy of the apostolic choir, let him open the kingdom of heaven to those entering, let him bind the guilty by his power, let him mercifully absolve the penitent; Stephen is the first of the martyrs, Stephen leads the purple-clad army, who, while the blood of his Lord was yet warm, as an eager warrior poured out his own blood.
And because by his own gore he acquired for himself the purple with which he was dyed, deservedly he obtained afterward a crown from his King, he who already at his birth had drawn his name by lot from the crown: truly, whom Christ foreknew and predestined, that very one He has now called first to the glory of martyrdom. When Christ was piously born for our salvation, straightway the devil begot to the divine goodness numerous and pernicious monstrosities, that he might frame a mockery out of religion, turn sanctity into sacrilege, and out of honor to God prepare an injury against God. Hence it is, brethren, hence it is that today the Gentiles drag out their gods with exquisite foulnesses, with contrived disgrace, and, more shameful than shamefulness itself, drag them to be seen, distract, and haul about those whom they make not fit to be seen.
What vanity, what madness, what great blindness—to confess them as gods, and to defame them with wretched mockeries! They are mockers, not worshippers, who make sport of the gods they venerate; they inflict injuries, not honors, who so deform those gods by whom they suppose themselves fashioned; they confound, they do not glorify, who compose those gods out of confusion itself. Truly, as the Apostle says, Because they did not approve to have God in their knowledge, God delivered them up to a reprobate sense, to do those things which are not fitting (Rom. i): when to those from whom they take away human attributes they give divine ones, when they judge them worthy of heaven, when they make them not worthy even of the earth itself, truly they have been given up to a reprobate sense;
and this is not of human judgment, it is of the wisdom of God, that those very ones should be the avengers of the injuries done to God who are proved to be the authors of the injury. What wrath, what vengeance, that God should thus exact retribution for the offense against Him from the idols, so that those whom antiquity falsely proclaimed to be gods by altars, incense, victims, gems, and gold, posterity should judge by their base worship to have been men most base, and should mark their life, morals, and deeds upon their very images, and should teach that such ones are rather to be fled than worshipped! Let us lament, brethren, both those who have followed such things, and let us rejoice that we by heaven's help have escaped such things.
Those whose adulteries they shape in images, whose fornications they commit to pictures, whose incests they inscribe upon paintings, whose cruelties they commend in books, whose parricides they hand down to the ages, whose impieties resound in tragedies, whose obscenities they act out—by what madness would they believe these to be gods, unless because they are possessed by a desire for crimes, by a love of wickedness, so that they long to have criminal gods? He who desires to sin cultivates and venerates the authors of sins. Hence it is that the adulterer attached himself to Venus; hence it is that the cruel man devotes himself to Mars. These things we have said, brethren, to expose the cause why the Gentiles today make their gods commit such things as we cannot endure, and make them such as are to those who behold them both a horror and a shame;
and cause that at some time even those who make them may shudder at them and forsake them, and that Christians may glory in having been freed from such things through Christ: if only they be not polluted by their spectacles, if they do not defile themselves by the touch of their incense, if they flee the peril of this kind that comes from consent—since consent is always equal to the deeds, as the Apostle proves, when he says: Not only those who do these things, but also those who consent to those doing them (Rom. i). And if there is so great a condemnation from consent, who shall sufficiently lament those who make idols of their very selves? Have not these lost the image of God, forfeited His likeness, been stripped of the garment of Christ, who have fashioned themselves after the sacrilegious forms of idols?
But someone says: These are not zeal for sacrilege, they are vows of jests; and this is the merriment of a new season, not the error of antiquity; this is the beginning of the year, not an offense of paganism. You err, O man, these are not games, they are crimes. Who makes sport of impiety, who jests about sacrilege, who calls a sacrilege 'laughter'? He greatly deceives himself who so thinks; he is a tyrant, who presumes to take on a tyrant's garb. He who makes himself a god becomes a contradictor of the true God; he refused to bear the image of God who wished to bear the mask of an idol; he who wished to jest with the devil cannot rejoice with Christ. No one plays safely with a serpent, no one jests with the devil unpunished.
If therefore there is any tenderness of piety in us, if there is in us any regard for humanity, if any affection for our brethren's salvation possesses us, let us draw away those who thus run to perdition, are snatched to death, are dragged to Tartarus, are hastening into Gehenna. Let therefore the father draw away his son, the master his servant, kinsman his kinsman, citizen his fellow-citizen, man his fellow-man, the Christian all who have compared themselves to beasts, made themselves equal to cattle, likened themselves to herds, fashioned themselves after demons. And he who sets them free finds a reward; he who neglects them acquires an offense. Blessed is he who is the guardian of his own life, and the provider of another's salvation.