Collected Works 17

The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt of the age, the whole cause of judgment, is idolatry. For although each transgression retains its own character, although each is destined for judgment under its own name, yet it is settled under the charge of idolatry. Set aside the titles, examine the deeds. The idolater is likewise a murderer. Dost thou ask whom he has slain? If it makes anything for the ambition of a fine indictment, no stranger nor enemy, but his very self. By what snares? Those of his own error. With what weapon? The offence against God. With how many blows? With as many as there are idolatries. He who denies that the idolater has perished will deny that the idolater has committed murder. Likewise thou mayest recognize adultery and fornication in the same man;

For whoever serves false gods is without doubt an adulterer against the truth, since every falsehood is adultery. And so he is plunged into fornication as well. For who that works together with unclean spirits does not walk defiled and debauched? And indeed the Holy Scriptures use the very word 'fornication' in reproaching idolatry. The nature of fraud, I suppose, is this: if a man seize what belongs to another or deny another his due; and surely fraud committed against a man bears the name of a most serious crime. But idolatry does fraud against God, denying Him His own honours and conferring them upon others, so that it joins insult to fraud as well. But if fraud, as much as fornication and adultery, brings death, then in these too idolatry is no less unabsolved from the guilt of murder.

After such crimes, so deadly, so devouring of salvation, the rest likewise, each in its own way and separately disposed, present their own share of the condition within idolatry. In it there are also the lusts of the world; for what solemnity of idolatry is there without the pomp of adornment and finery? In it there is wantonness and drunkenness, since such things are for the most part frequented for the sake of feasting and belly and appetite. In it there is injustice; for what is more unjust than that which knows not the Father of justice? In it also there is vanity, since its whole rationale is vain. In it there is lying, since its whole substance is a lie. And so it comes to pass that all things are found in idolatry, and idolatry in all things.

But furthermore, since all sins savour of enmity against God, and since nothing that savours against God is not reckoned to the demons and unclean spirits to whom the idols are made over, without doubt whoever sins commits idolatry; for he does that which belongs to the vassals of idols. But let all the names of the several crimes retire into the peculiarities of their own works, and let idolatry remain in that which it is of itself. It suffices to itself, a name so hostile to God, a substance of crime so rich, which puts forth so many branches, spreads out so many veins, that from this above all our present matter has been undertaken — in how many ways the vast reach of idolatry must be guarded against by us; since in manifold ways it subverts the servants of God, not only when unrecognised but even when dissembled.

Most people think idolatry is to be understood only in these ways: if someone burns incense, or offers sacrifice, or presents a sacrificial feast, or binds himself to some sacred rites or priesthoods — just as if someone were to think adultery is to be reckoned only in kisses and embraces and in the very union of the flesh, or murder only in the shedding of blood and the taking away of life. But how much more widely the Lord disposes these matters, we are certain; since He designates adultery even in concupiscence, if a man has cast his eye lustfully and stirred his soul unchastely, and since He judges murder even in a word of cursing or reviling, and in every outburst of anger, and in the neglect of love toward a brother.

As John teaches that he is a murderer who hates his brother. Otherwise the devil's ingenuity in malice, and God's dominion in the discipline by which He fortifies us against the devil's vast reaches, would rest upon some trifling thing, if we were to be judged only in those sins which even the heathen nations have decreed must be avenged. How shall our righteousness abound above the scribes and Pharisees, as the Lord has prescribed, unless we discern the abundance of its adversary, that is, of unrighteousness? But if the head of unrighteousness is idolatry, our first task is to be fore-armed against the abundance of idolatry, while we recognise it not only in its manifest forms. For some time back the idol did not exist.

Before the craftsmen of this monster had boiled up, there were only temples and empty shrines, just as to this day in certain places the traces of antiquity remain. Nevertheless idolatry was being practised, not under this name, but in this work. For even today it can be carried on outside a temple and without an idol. But when the devil brought into the world the makers of statues and images and simulacra of every kind, that crude business of human calamity obtained both its name and its advancement from the idols. Thenceforth the head of idolatry has become every art that produces an idol in any way whatever.

For it makes no difference whether a modeller fashions it, or a carver engraves it, or an embroiderer weaves it; nor does it matter as to the material, whether the idol be formed of plaster, or colours, or stone, or bronze, or silver, or thread. For since idolatry can take place even without an idol, surely, when the idol is present, it makes no difference of what kind it is, of what material, of what shape — lest anyone should think that only that is to be held an idol which has been consecrated in human form. To this end an interpretation of the word is needful. Eidos in Greek means 'form'; from it, by a diminutive, eidolon is derived; and likewise among us 'form' (forma) has made 'little form' (formula). Therefore every form or little form demands to be called an idol. Hence idolatry is all attendance and service about every idol.

Hence too every maker of an idol is guilty of one and the same crime — unless the people committed too little idolatry, seeing that they consecrated to themselves the likeness of a calf and not of a man. God forbids the idol to be made as much as to be worshipped. Inasmuch as it precedes, that a thing be made which can be worshipped, so much the more prior is it that it should not be made, if it is not lawful to worship it. For this cause, namely to root out the very matter of idolatry, the divine law proclaims: You shall not make an idol; and, adding, nor the likeness of those things which are in heaven and which are in earth and which are in the sea, it has forbidden to God's servants throughout the whole world arts of this kind.

Enoch had gone before, foretelling that the demons and the spirits of the deserter angels would turn all the elements, all that the world contains in its census — whatever is contained in heaven, in sea, in earth — into idolatry, so that they might be consecrated in the place of God, against God. Therefore human error worships all things save only the Creator of all things Himself. The images of these things are idols; the consecration of the images is idolatry. Whatever idolatry commits must of necessity be reckoned to the craftsman of any and every idol. Finally, the same Enoch fore-condemns in his threatening both the worshippers and the fabricators of the idol together. And again: I swear to you, sinners, that against the day of the destruction of blood, sorrow is prepared.

You who serve stones, and who make images of gold and silver and wood and stone and clay, and who serve phantoms and demons and infernal spirits and all errors not according to knowledge — from these you shall find no help. And Isaiah indeed says: You are witnesses, whether there be a God besides Me. And there were none then who fashion and carve, all of them vain, who make what pleases themselves, things which shall not profit them. And thereupon follows that whole pronouncement which detests both the craftsmen and the worshippers; whose conclusion is: Know that their heart is ashes and earth, and no one can deliver his own soul. Where David likewise speaks of the makers: Let those become like them, he says, who make them.

And what should I, a man of feeble memory, further suggest? What should I recall from the Scriptures? As though either the voice of the Holy Spirit did not suffice, or as though it were still to be debated whether the Lord has cursed and condemned first the very craftsmen of those things whose worshippers He curses and condemns. Full plainly will I answer, and at greater length, the excuses of craftsmen of this sort — who ought never to be admitted into the house of God, if one knows that discipline. Now that cry so wont to be objected, 'I have no other way to live,' can be beaten back the more sharply: Live, then, must you? What have you to do with God, if you live by your own laws? Then, as to their daring even to argue from the Scriptures that the apostle said:

'As each one was found, so let him continue' — by this interpretation we could all, then, continue in our sins. For not one of us was found not a sinner, since Christ came down for no other cause than to set sinners free. Likewise they say that the same apostle enjoined, after his own example, that everyone should work with his own hands for a living. If this precept is to be defended by all hands, then, I suppose, bath-thieves too live by their own hands, and robbers themselves ply their living with their hands; forgers, moreover, work their evil writings surely not with their feet but with their hands; and actors indeed labour for their living not with hands alone but with their whole limbs.

Let the Church, then, lie open to all who support themselves by their hands and their own work — if there is no exception of those arts which God's discipline does not receive! But someone says, against the proposition of the forbidden likeness: Why then did Moses in the wilderness make a likeness of a serpent out of bronze? Apart from that, figures which were being pre-arranged as a foreshadowing of some hidden dispensation belong not to the abrogation of the law, but to the exemplars of their own cause. Otherwise, if we were to interpret these things as adversaries of the law do, should we not, like the Marcionites, ascribe inconstancy to the Almighty — whom they in this manner destroy as mutable, since in one place He forbids, in another commands?

But if anyone dissembles that that figure of the bronze serpent, suspended after the manner of a shape, designated the figure of the Lord's cross, which was to free us from the serpents — that is, from the angels of the devil — while through itself it hung up the devil, that is, the serpent, slain; or whatever other exposition of that figure has been revealed to worthier persons — provided only the apostle affirms that all things then befell the people figuratively. Well then, that the same God both forbade a likeness to be made by the law, and by an extraordinary command enjoined the likeness of the serpent! If you observe the same God, you have His law: You shall not make a likeness.

If you also regard the precept concerning the likeness made afterwards, then you too, imitate Moses: make no simulacrum against the law, unless God has commanded you also. If no law of God had forbidden idols to be made by us, if no voice of the Holy Spirit had uttered its threat against the fabricators of idols no less than against the worshippers, we should interpret from our very sacrament that arts of this sort are opposed to our faith. For how have we renounced the devil and his angels, if we make them? What repudiation did we utter to those, I do not say with whom, but of whom we live? What discord have we taken up against those to whom, for the grace of our profession, we are bound? Can you have denied with the tongue what you confess with the hand? Destroy with a word what you build up by a deed?

Do you preach one God, you who make so many? Do you preach the true God, you who make false ones? 'I make them,' says someone, 'but I do not worship them' — as though there were some cause for which he dared not to worship, other than that for which he ought not to make them, namely, on account of the offence given to God in either case. Nay, you do worship, you who make them so that they can be worshipped. And you worship not with the spirit of some cheap odour, but with your own; nor at the cost of a beast's life, but of your own soul. To them you sacrifice your talent; to them you pour out your sweat; to them you kindle your prudence. You are more to them than a priest, since through you they have a priest; your diligence is their divinity. Do you deny that you worship what you make? But they do not deny it — those to whom you slay this fatter and more gilded and greater victim, your own salvation, all the day long.

To this point the zeal of faith will plead, groaning: that a Christian should come from the idols into the Church, from the workshop of the adversary into the house of God; that he should lift up to God the Father hands that are the mothers of idols; that with these hands he should worship, which outside are worshipped against God; that he should apply to the body of the Lord those hands which confer bodies upon demons! Nor is this enough. It were a small thing if they received from other hands what they defile; but they themselves also hand over to others what they have defiled. Fabricators of idols are chosen into the ecclesiastical order. O the wickedness! Once the Jews laid hands on Christ; these men daily assault His body. O hands that ought to be cut off! Let them now consider whether it was said figuratively: If your hand offends you, cut it off.

What hands are more to be cut off than those in which the Lord's body is offended? There are also other kinds of very many arts which, even though they do not touch the fabrication of idols, nevertheless discharge with the same guilt those things without which idols can do nothing. For it makes no difference whether you build up or adorn, if you have constructed a temple, an altar, a little shrine for the idol; if you have wrought gold-leaf, or insignia, or even built a house for it. Greater is work of this kind, which confers not the figure but the authority. But if the necessity of self-support is thus urged, they have also other kinds of work which, without any deviation from the discipline — that is, without the fashioning of an idol — may furnish the resource of a living.

The plasterer knows both how to mend roofs and to lay on plaster-work, to line a cistern, to run out cornices, and to raise many other ornaments upon walls besides idols. The painter too knows this, and the marble-worker, and the bronze-smith, and every engraver knows the wide range of his own craft, and assuredly the far easier tasks. For he who traces out a statue, how much more easily does he coat a slab? He who carves a Mars out of linden-wood, how much more quickly does he put together a cabinet? No art is not either the mother or the near kinswoman of another art. Nothing is free of another. There are as many veins of the arts as there are lusts of men. But there is a difference as to wages and the prices of handiwork; and likewise a difference as to labour. A smaller wage is repaid by more frequent employment. How many walls call for statues?

How many temples and shrines are built for idols? But how many houses, and mansions, and baths, and blocks of tenements! Slippers and sandals are gilded every day; Mercury and Serapis not every day. Let that suffice for the gain of the crafts. Luxury and ambition are more frequent than any superstition. Ambition will require dishes and cups more readily than superstition; luxury too spends out garlands more than does religious solemnity. When therefore we exhort men to these kinds of crafts — which do not touch the idol itself, nor the things that belong to the idol, but which are often common both to men and to idols — we must also take heed of this: that nothing be demanded of us from our hands, with our knowledge, for the service of idols.

But if we grant this, and do not act by the remedies now in use, I do not think that we are free from the contagion of idolatry — we whose hands, not in ignorance, are caught in the service, or in the honour and use, of demons. Now, we observe that among the arts there are also certain professions liable to idolatry. Of astrologers there is no need even to speak. But since a certain one in these days has come forward defending for himself the continuance of that profession, I will use a few words. I do not allege that he honours idols, whose names he has inscribed upon the heavens, to whom he has assigned all the power of God, so that men on this account think God need not be sought, presuming that we are driven by the immutable decree of the stars.

One thing I put forward: that those angels are deserters of God, lovers of women, and betrayers of this curious lore as well, and on that account also condemned by God. O divine sentence, persisting even down to earth, to which even the ignorant bear witness! The astrologers are expelled, just as their angels were; the City and Italy are forbidden to astrologers, just as heaven was to their angels. There is the same penalty of exile for disciples and for masters. But the Magi — and astrologers — came from the East. We know the fellowship of magic and astrology with each other. The first interpreters of the stars, then, announced Christ's birth; the first they were to bring gifts. By this name, I suppose, they bound Christ to themselves. What then? Shall the religion of those Magi therefore now afford patronage even to astrologers?

The astrology of today, forsooth, is concerned with Christ; it observes and foretells the stars of Christ, not of Saturn and Mars and any other of that same order of the dead! But that knowledge was permitted only up to the Gospel, so that, once Christ was brought forth, no one thereafter should interpret anyone's nativity from heaven. For that frankincense too, and the myrrh and the gold, they then offered to the infant Lord as, so to speak, the closing act of sacrificial worship and of worldly glory, which Christ was about to abolish.

Therefore the dream which, without doubt from God's will, was suggested to those same Magi — that they should go into their own country, but by another way, not that by which they had come — that is, that they should not walk in their former sect; not that Herod might not persecute them (for he did not even persecute them, being ignorant even that they had departed by another way, since he was ignorant also of the way by which they had come) — so much so that we ought to understand 'way' as sect and discipline. And so the Magi were commanded thenceforth to walk otherwise. So too that other kind of magic which works by miracles, rivalling even against Moses by the patience of God, drew itself out even down to the Gospel.

For thereafter Simon Magus too — by then just now a believer, since he still thought somewhat in the manner of his mountebank sect, namely that among the miracles of his profession he might also traffic in the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands — was cursed by the apostles and cast out from the faith. And another magician, who was with Sergius Paulus, since he likewise opposed the apostles, was punished with the loss of his sight. This too the astrologers would have reported, I believe, if any of them had fallen in with the apostles. Yet since magic is punished — of which astrology is a species — surely the species too is condemned within its genus. After the Gospel you will nowhere find either sophists or Chaldeans or enchanters or diviners or magi, save plainly punished. Where is the wise? where the scribe? where the disputer of this age?

Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? You know nothing, astrologer, if you did not know that you would become a Christian. But if you did know, you ought to have known this too: that you would have nothing to do with that profession. That very art would instruct you about its own peril — the art which foretells the crises of others' lives. You have no part nor lot in this reckoning. He cannot hope for the kingdom of the heavens whose finger or rod abuses heaven. Inquiry must be made also concerning schoolmasters, and indeed the other professors of letters. Nay, there is no doubt that they are near akin to idolatry in its manifold forms.

First, they are of necessity such as must preach the gods of the nations, must set forth their names, genealogies, fables, and all their honorific decorations; and then must observe the solemnities and festivals of those same gods, as being those upon which they reckon up their revenues. What schoolmaster will attend the Quinquatria without a tablet of the seven idols? He consecrates the very first offering of a new pupil to the honour and name of Minerva; so that, even though he be not verbally profaned to any one idol as partaking of idol-sacrifice, yet he is to be shunned as an idolater. What? Is there less of defilement? Nay, is the gain not the more excellent, being dedicated to an idol by names and honours? Just as much as the Minervalia are Minerva's, and the Saturnalia Saturn's — which even by the little slaves must be celebrated in the season of the Saturnalia.

The New Year's gifts also must be caught at, and the Septimontium, and the Bruma, and the honoraria of a dear kinship must all be exacted; the schools of Flora must be crowned; the priestesses and aediles offer sacrifice when installed; the school is honoured on holidays. The same is done on the birthday of an idol; every pomp of the devil is frequented. Who will think these things befit a Christian, unless he thinks they befit even one who is not a schoolmaster? We know it can be said: If it is not lawful for the servants of God to teach letters, neither will it be lawful to learn them; and how then would anyone be trained even to human prudence, or to any sense or action, seeing that literature is the instrument of all life? How do we repudiate secular studies, without which divine things cannot be attained?

Let us therefore look at the necessity of literary erudition; let us consider that it can in part be admitted, in part must be avoided. It is more fitting for the faithful to learn letters than to teach them; for the rationale of learning and of teaching is different. If a believer teaches letters, without doubt, while he teaches, he commends the praises of the idols interwoven therein; while he transmits them, he affirms them; while he mentions them, he bears witness. He seals the very gods with this name, whereas the law forbids, as we have said, that the gods be pronounced and that this name be placed in vain. Hence the first faith is built up for the devil from the very beginnings of erudition. Ask whether he who catechises about idols commits idolatry.

But when a believer learns these things, if he already understands what they are, he neither receives nor admits them — much more so if he has long understood. Or, when he begins to understand, he ought first to understand what he learned first, that is, concerning God and the faith. Accordingly he will spit out those things and not receive them, and will be as safe as one who, knowing it to be poison, receives it from an ignorant person yet does not drink it. To such a one the necessity is reckoned as an excuse, because he cannot learn otherwise. But it is so much the easier not to teach letters than not to learn them, inasmuch as the believing pupil will more easily not approach the other defilements of the schools — those arising from public and private solemnities — than the master will avoid frequenting them.

If we consider the rest of the offences by class — first of all covetousness, the root of all evils, ensnared by which some have suffered shipwreck concerning the faith — since covetousness has twice been called idolatry by the same apostle; and then lying, the minister of covetousness (I say nothing of perjury, since it is not even lawful to swear) — is trafficking fit for a servant of God? For the rest, if covetousness be removed, what cause is there for acquiring? When the cause of acquiring ceases, there will be no necessity of trading. But suppose there be now some honest gain, secure from the taint of covetousness and lying: still, I think, it offends into the crime of idolatry, that trade which pertains to the very soul and spirit of idols, which fattens every demon.

Is that not indeed the principal idolatry? Let them consider whether these same wares — incense, I mean, and the other foreign products — are used for the sacrifice of idols, and also by men for medicinal preparations, and moreover by us as well for the solaces of burial. Certainly, when the pomps, the priesthoods, the sacrifices of idols are equipped out of your perils, losses, inconveniences, deliberations, journeyings, and tradings, what else are you shown to be than a procurer for idols? Let no one contend that in this manner controversy may be raised against all forms of trade. The graver offences, each in proportion to the magnitude of their peril, extend the diligence of our observance, so that we withdraw not only from these things themselves, but also from those through which they are done.

For although it be done by others, it makes no difference if it be done through me. In nothing ought I to be necessary to another, when he does what is not lawful for me. From this — that I am forbidden to do it — I ought to understand that I must take care that it be not done through me. In short, in another case, of no lighter guilt, I observe this principle. For since it is forbidden me to fornicate, I furnish to others for that business no effort or complicity whatever. Since I have set apart my own flesh from the brothels, I recognise that I cannot ply either pandering or that kind of gain for another's sake. So too the prohibition of murder shows me that even the trainer of gladiators is barred from the Church: he will not, of himself, refrain from doing what he supplies to another to be done. Behold a still nearer precedent.

If a contractor for public victims should come to the faith, will you permit him to remain in that business? Or if, being already a believer, he has undertaken to carry it on, will you think he should be retained in the Church? Not, I think, unless one will also dissemble about the incense-seller. Forsooth, the procuring of blood falls to some, of odours to others! If, before idols existed in the world, idolatry, still shapeless, was transacted with these wares; if even now the work of idolatry is for the most part perpetrated without an idol, by the burnings of odours — does the incense-seller not do somewhat more service, and that toward the demons? For idolatry is more easily carried on without an idol than without the incense-seller's merchandise. Let us interrogate the conscience of faith itself.

With what face will a Christian incense-seller, if he passes through the temples, with what face will he spit upon and blow out the smoking altars for which he himself has provided? With what constancy will he exorcise his own foster-children, to whom he furnishes his own house as a store-room? For that man, even if he has cast out a demon, let him not be pleased with himself as touching the faith; for he has not cast out an enemy. He ought easily to have obtained it of one whom he feeds daily. There is, therefore, no art, no profession, no trade, which administers anything either to the equipping or forming of idols, that can be free of the title of idolatry — unless indeed we interpret idolatry as something altogether other than the service of worshipping idols. We flatter ourselves ill concerning the necessities of human self-support, if after our faith has been sealed we say:

'I have no way to live.' For here now I will answer more fully that abrupt proposition. It is said too late. For it ought to have been deliberated beforehand, after the likeness of that most provident builder who first reckons up the cost of the work against his own resources, lest, when he has begun, he should afterwards blush at his failure. But even now you have the sayings and examples of the Lord which take away from you every excuse. For what do you say? 'I shall be in want.' But the Lord calls the needy blessed. 'I shall have no food': but He says, Take no thought about food. And for clothing we have the example of the lilies. 'I had need of substance': but all things are to be sold and distributed to the needy. 'But provision must be made for children and posterity': no one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the work.

'But I was bound by circumstance': No one can serve two masters. If you wish to be the Lord's disciple, it is necessary that you take up your cross and follow the Lord — that is, your straits and torments, or at least your own body, which is after the manner of a cross. Parents, spouses, children must be forsaken for God's sake. Do you hesitate about arts and tradings and professions, even for the sake of children and parents? Even then it was shown to us that both our pledges of affection and our crafts and our business must be forsaken for the Lord's sake, when James and John, called by the Lord, forsook both father and ship; when Matthew was raised up from the toll-booth; when even to bury one's father was too slow for faith. Not one of those whom the Lord chose said, 'I have no way to live.'

Faith does not fear famine. It knows that famine, no less than every kind of death, is to be despised by it for God's sake. It has learned not to regard life; how much more, food? How very few have fulfilled these things? But the things which are difficult with men are easy with God.

Yet let us not so flatter ourselves concerning the meekness and clemency of God as to indulge our necessities even to the point of affinities with idolatry; but let us shun its every breath, even from afar, as we would a plague — not only in those matters which we have set forth above, but in the whole series of human superstition, whether it be made over to its own gods, or to the dead, or to kings, as pertaining to the same unclean spirits: now through sacrifices and priesthoods, now through spectacles and the like, now through festal days. But of sacrifices and priesthoods, what shall I say? And concerning spectacles and pleasures of this kind, we have already filled a volume of their own.

In this place it is fitting to treat again of festal days and other extraordinary solemnities, which we sometimes ascribe to our wantonness, sometimes to our timidity, sharing with the nations in idolatrous matters against faith and discipline. On this point first I will take my stand: whether a servant of God ought to have communion even with the nations themselves in things of this kind, whether in dress, or in diet, or in any other manner of their festivity. To rejoice with them that rejoice, and to mourn with them that mourn, was said by the apostle when he exhorted to unanimity — among the brethren. But apart from this, there is no fellowship of light with darkness, of life with death; else we tear asunder what is written: The world shall rejoice, but you shall mourn.

If we rejoice with the world, it is to be feared that we may also mourn with the world. But while the world rejoices, let us mourn; and when afterward the world mourns, we shall rejoice. Thus too Lazarus among the dead, having obtained refreshment in Abraham's bosom, and on the other side the rich man set in the torment of fire, balance out their alternating turns of evils and goods by an answering recompense. There are certain days of gifts, which for some discharge the mark of an honour, and for others the debt of a wage. 'Now, then,' you say, 'I shall receive what is mine, or repay what belongs to another.'

If men have consecrated this custom to themselves out of superstition, why do you, a stranger to all their vanity, share in these solemn offerings to idols, as though a rule about a day had been prescribed to you also, so that you might not, apart from the observance of the day, pay what you owe to a man, or receive what is owed to you by a man? Give the pattern in which you would have dealings conducted with you. For why should you even hide yourself, when by another's ignorance you defile your own conscience? If it is not unknown that you are a Christian, you are being tested, and you act against another's conscience as one who is not a Christian; but if you also dissemble, you are, when tested, given over. Certainly, whether the one way or the other, you are guilty of confusion before God.

'But whoever shall have been ashamed of me before men, I also,' He says, 'will be ashamed of him before my Father who is in heaven.' XIV. But indeed very many have now brought themselves to the mind that they must be pardoned if at times they do what the heathen do, lest the Name be blasphemed. Now the blasphemy which is by every means to be avoided by us is, I think, this: if any of us should lead a heathen into just blasphemy, whether by fraud or by wrong or by insult or by any other matter of deserved complaint, in which the Name is deservedly struck, so that the Lord too is deservedly angered. But as for the rest, if it was said of every blasphemy, 'for your sake my Name is blasphemed,' we all perish, since the whole circus assails the Name with wicked shouts, though it has deserved nothing.

Let us cease, and it will not be blasphemed. Nay rather, let it be blasphemed while we are in the observance, not in the transgression, of discipline; while we are being approved, not while we are being reproved. O blasphemy akin to martyrdom, which then testifies me a Christian, when for that very reason it curses me! The cursing of the Name because of a discipline kept is a blessing. 'If I wished,' he says, 'to please men, I should not be a servant of Christ.' Yet the same man elsewhere bids: 'Let us take care to please all men.' 'As I,' he says, 'please all men in all things.' Was he, forsooth, pleasing men by celebrating the Saturnalia and the Kalends of January? Or by modesty and patience? Or by gravity, or by kindness, or by integrity? Accordingly, when he says, 'I became all things to all men, that I might gain all':

did he become an idolater to idolaters? Was he a heathen to the heathen? Was he worldly to the worldly? But although he does not forbid us to associate with idolaters and adulterers and other criminals, saying, 'otherwise you would have to go out of the world,' he does not thereby loosen the reins of conduct so far that, because it is necessary for us both to live and to mingle with sinners, we might therefore also sin with them. Where there is the intercourse of life, which the apostle grants, there is not the sinning, which no one permits. It is lawful to live together with the heathen; to die together is not lawful. Let us live together with all; let us rejoice together in the fellowship of nature, not of superstition. We are equals in soul, not in discipline; joint possessors of the world, not of error.

But if we have no right of communion in such things with strangers, how much more wickedly is it to frequent these things among brethren! Who can tolerate or defend this? The Holy Spirit reproaches the Jews for their festal days: 'Your sabbaths,' He says, 'and new moons and ceremonies my soul hates.' For us, to whom the sabbaths are foreign, and the new moons and the feasts once beloved of God, there are frequented the Saturnalia and the January feasts and the Brumalia and the Matronalia; gifts pass to and fro, and New-Year's presents; games resound, banquets clatter. O the better fidelity of the nations to their own sect, which claims for itself no solemnity of the Christians! Not the Lord's day, not Pentecost, would they, even if they had known them, have shared with us;

for they would be afraid, lest they should seem to be Christians. We, on the other hand, are not afraid of being pronounced heathen. If anything is to be indulged to the flesh, you have — I will not say your own days only, but even more. For to the heathen each festival comes but once a year, but to you every eighth day. Pick out the several solemnities of the nations and set them out in a row: they will not be able to fill up Pentecost. XV. 'But let your works shine,' He says. Yet now it is our shops and doors that shine. You may now find more doors of the heathen without lamps and laurels than of Christians. On this appearance too, what is one to think? If it is an honour to an idol, without doubt an honour to an idol is idolatry. If it is for a man's sake, let us reflect that all idolatry is for a man's sake.

Let us reflect that all idolatry is a worship rendered to men, since it is agreed, even among their own people, that the very gods of the nations were formerly men. Therefore it makes no difference whether that superstition be paid to men of an earlier age or of this present one. Idolatry has been condemned, not on account of the persons who are set up, but on account of those observances, which pertain to demons. 'The things that are Caesar's must be rendered to Caesar.' It is well that He added: 'and the things that are God's to God.' What, then, are the things that are Caesar's? Namely, those about which the consultation was then being raised, whether the tribute should be paid to Caesar or not.

For this reason the Lord demanded that a coin be shown to Him, and asked whose image it bore; and when He had heard that it was Caesar's, He said, 'Render the things that are Caesar's to Caesar, and the things that are God's to God' — that is, the image of Caesar to Caesar, which is on the coin, and the image of God to God, which is in man; so that to Caesar indeed you may render money, but to God your very self. Otherwise, what will be God's, if all things are Caesar's? 'Then,' you say, 'is it an honour to God to have lamps before the doors and laurels on the doorposts?' It is assuredly not that which is an honour to God, but that which is an honour to him who, in the place of God, is honoured by such observances — as far as it is in the open, apart from the working which is in secret, reaching to the demons.

For we ought to be assured — if it escapes any through ignorance of secular literature — that even of doors there are gods among the Romans: Cardea, named from the hinges (cardines), and Forculus from the doors (fores), and Limentinus from the threshold (limen), and Janus himself from the gate (ianua). And assuredly we know that, although the names be empty and made-up, yet when they are drawn into superstition, they draw to themselves the demons and every unclean spirit through the bond of consecration. Otherwise the demons have no name severally, but they find a name there where they also find a pledge. Among the Greeks too we read of Apollo of the Doorway (Thyraeus) and the Antelian demons, as presiding over doors.

Foreseeing therefore from the beginning that doors too would come into superstition, the Holy Spirit foretold it through the most ancient prophet Enoch. For we see also that other doors are worshipped in the baths. But if there are those who are worshipped in doorways, to them the lamps and laurels also will belong. Whatever you shall have done to a door, you will have done to an idol. In this place I call to witness by the authority of God as well, because it is not even safe to withhold whatever has been shown to one man assuredly for the sake of all. I know a brother who was severely chastised through a vision in the same night, because his servants had suddenly crowned his gate on the announcement of public rejoicings. And yet he himself had neither crowned it nor commanded it; for he had gone out before, and on returning had rebuked the deed.

So strictly are we appraised before God, in the case even of a discipline of this kind concerning our household. Therefore, as regards the honours of kings or emperors, we have a rule sufficiently prescribed: that we ought to be, in all deference, according to the apostle's precept, subject to magistrates and princes and powers — but within the limits of discipline, so long as we keep ourselves separate from idolatry. For this reason too that example of the three brethren went before, who, otherwise obedient toward king Nebuchadnezzar, most steadfastly refused the honour of his image, proving that whatever is exalted beyond the measure of human honour, to the likeness of divine sublimity, is idolatry.

So too Daniel, in all else relying upon Darius, remained in office just so long as it was free from peril to discipline. For, that he might not undergo that peril, he no more feared the royal lions than those men feared the royal fires. Let them, then, kindle daily lamps for those who have no light; let them fasten upon their doorposts laurels destined soon to burn, for whom fires are impending; to those men there belong both the testimonies of darkness and the omens of punishments. But you are the light of the world, and a tree ever green. If you have renounced temples, make not your gate a temple. I have said too little: if you have renounced brothels, put not upon your house the appearance of a new brothel. XVI.

But concerning the observances of private and communal solemnities — such as those of the toga of manhood, of betrothals, of weddings, of name-givings — no peril is to be observed from the breath of idolatry which intervenes. For the occasions are to be considered on account of which the observance is rendered. These I judge to be clean in themselves, since neither the manly attire, nor the ring, nor the marital union descends from the honour of any idol. In short, I find no adornment cursed by God, except the womanly in a man. 'For cursed,' He says, 'is everyone who is clothed in women's garments.' But the toga, even by its very name, is a thing of manhood. Nor does God forbid weddings to be celebrated any more than a name to be given. But to these things sacrifices are attached.

Let me be invited, provided there be no title of sacrifice attached to the duty, and the discharge of my service be as far as is lawful for it. Would that indeed we could not even see the things which it is a sin for us to do. But since the evil one has so surrounded the world with idolatry, it will be permitted to be present at certain things which engage us as dutiful toward a man, not toward an idol. Plainly, invited to a priesthood and a sacrifice, I will not go (for that is the proper office of an idol); but neither will I take part by counsel, nor by expense, nor by any other service, in a matter of this kind. If, invited on account of a sacrifice, I stand by, I shall be a partaker of idolatry; if some other cause joins me to the one sacrificing, I shall be only a spectator of the sacrifice. XVII.

Moreover, what shall faithful slaves or freedmen do, and likewise officials attending upon their sacrificing masters or patrons or governors? Indeed, if anyone has handed the wine to one sacrificing — nay, if he has assisted with even a single word necessary to the sacrifice — he will be reckoned a minister of idolatry. Mindful of this rule, we can render our service even to magistrates and powers, after the pattern of the patriarchs and other elders, who attended upon idolatrous kings up to the point of idolatry.

Hence a discussion has lately arisen, whether a servant of God may take upon himself the administration of any dignity or power, if he can keep himself untouched by every kind of idolatry, whether by some favour or even by some cleverness — according to the manner in which both Joseph and Daniel, clean from idolatry, administered both dignity and power in the ornament and purple of the prefecture over all Egypt or Babylonia.

Let us grant, then, that someone can succeed to an office, so that he may bear whatever honour in the mere name of honour alone: that he neither sacrifice nor lend his authority to sacrifices, nor let out victims, nor delegate the care of temples, nor manage their revenues, nor give shows at his own or the public expense, nor preside over the giving of them, nor proclaim or decree anything solemn, nor even take an oath; and moreover, as to what belongs to power, that he neither judge concerning any man's life or honour — for you may allow it concerning money — nor condemn nor pre-condemn, bind no one, imprison or torture no one — if it is credible that these things can be done. XVIII. But now we must treat of the mere platform and apparatus of the honour.

Everyone's proper attire pertains as much to daily use as to honour and dignity. Therefore that purple and the golden neck-ornament were, in the same manner among the Egyptians and Babylonians, the insignia of dignity, in which manner now the bordered togas, or the trabeae, or the palm-embroidered robes, and the golden crowns of the provincial priests are; but not under the same condition. For among those peoples they were conferred, in the name of honour only, upon those who deserved the intimacy of kings. Whence those clothed in the king's purple were called 'purpled,' from the purple, just as among us men are called 'candidates' from the white toga (toga candida) — but not so that that platform should be bound also to priesthoods or to any services of idols.

For if it were so, assuredly men of such great holiness and steadfastness would at once have refused defiled garments, and it would at once have become apparent that Daniel had not served idols, nor worshipped Bel or the dragon — which appeared much later. That purple, then, was simple, and was no longer the mark of dignity, but of free birth among the barbarians. For just as Joseph, who had been a slave, and Daniel, who through captivity had had his estate changed, attained the citizenship of Babylon and Egypt through the garb of barbarian free birth, so among us too the faithful, if it be necessary, may be granted, for boys the bordered toga and for girls the stola — the marks of birth, not of power; of family, not of honour; of rank, not of superstition.

But as for the purple, or the other insignia of dignities and powers, dedicated from the beginning to a dignity and to powers interwoven with idolatry, they bear the stain of their own profanation — since besides, upon the very idols too are put the bordered togas and trabeae and broad-striped robes, and the fasces also and the rods are borne before them, and rightly so. For the demons are the magistrates of this world; they bear the insignia of one and the same college, the fasces and the purples. What, then, will you gain if you use indeed the platform, but do not administer its works? No one can seem clean amid unclean things. If you put on a tunic defiled in itself, that tunic perhaps may not be defiled by you, but you cannot be clean through it.

Now then, you who argue from Joseph and Daniel, know that old things and new, rough things and polished, things begun and things unfolded, servile things and free, are not always to be compared. For those men were also of servile condition; but you are the servant of no one, inasmuch as you are the servant of Christ alone, who has freed you also from the captivity of the world, and you ought to conduct yourself after the pattern of the Lord. That Lord walked in humility and obscurity, uncertain of a home: for 'the Son of Man,' He says, 'has not where to lay His head'; unadorned in dress — for otherwise He would not have said, 'behold, those who are clothed in soft raiment are in kings' houses'; in countenance, in short, and in appearance inglorious, as Isaiah too had foretold.

If He exercised no right of power even over His own, upon whom He performed a lowly ministry; if, in short, conscious of His own kingdom, He fled from being made a king, He most fully gave the pattern to His own by turning aside from every pinnacle and platform, both of dignity and of power. For who would have made greater use of them than the Son of God? What and how great fasces would have gone before Him, what purple would have blossomed from His shoulders, what gold would have shone from His head, had He not judged the glory of the world foreign both to Himself and to His own! Therefore what He was unwilling for, He rejected; what He rejected, He condemned; what He condemned, He counted in the pomp of the devil. For He would not have condemned it, unless it were not His own; but things that are not God's cannot be another's, save the devil's.

You, if you have abjured the pomp of the devil, know that whatever you have touched of it is idolatry. Let even this admonish you: that all the powers and dignities of this world are not only foreign to God, but also hostile to Him, in that through them punishments have been decreed against the servants of God, and through them the penalties prepared for the impious are ignored. 9. But both your birth and your substance are troublesome to you against idolatry. For avoiding it, remedies cannot be lacking; since even if they were lacking, there remains that one alone, whereby one is made happier not as a magistrate on earth, but in the heavens. XIX. In this chapter something may seem to be defined also concerning military service, which lies between dignity and power.

But now the question is raised whether a believer can turn to military service, and whether military service can be admitted to the faith — even the common soldier, or any of the lower ranks, for whom there is no necessity of sacrifices or of capital judgments. There is no agreement between the divine and the human sacrament, between the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, between the camp of light and the camp of darkness; one soul cannot be owed to two, to God and to Caesar. And Moses carried a rod, and Aaron a buckle, and John is girded with a leather belt, and Joshua the son of Nun leads a line of battle, and the people waged war, if it please you to trifle. But how will he wage war — nay, how will he even serve as a soldier in peace — without the sword, which the Lord has taken away?

For although soldiers had come to John and received the pattern of observance, and although even a centurion had believed, yet the Lord afterward, by disarming Peter, ungirded every soldier. No dress is lawful among us that is assigned to an unlawful act. XX. But since the conduct of divine discipline is endangered not only by deeds but also by words (for as it is written, 'behold the man and his deeds,' so also, 'by your mouth you shall be justified'), we ought to remember that a lapse into idolatry is to be guarded against even in words too, whether from the fault of custom or of timidity. The law forbids the gods of the nations to be named — not, of course, that we should pronounce their names, which our intercourse extorts from us to utter. For this must for the most part be said:

'you have that man in the temple of Aesculapius,' and 'I live in the street of Isis,' and 'he has been made a priest of Jupiter,' and many other things in this manner, since names of this kind are given to men as well. For I do not honour Saturn if I so call him by his own name; I honour him as little as I honour Marcus, if I call Marcus by his name. But He says: 'the name of other gods, mention it not, neither let it be heard from your mouth.' This He commanded, that we should not call those beings gods. For also in the first part of the law He says, 'you shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain' — that is, upon an idol. He, therefore, has fallen into idolatry who has honoured an idol with the name of God. But if gods must be spoken of, something must be added by which it may appear that I do not call them gods.

For Scripture too names gods, but adds 'their own' or 'of the nations'; as David, when he had named gods, where he says, 'but the gods of the nations are demons.' But this has been laid up for me rather for what follows. As for the rest, it is a fault of custom to say 'By Hercules,' 'So help me Faith,' — with the ignorance of certain people supervening, who do not know that it is an oath by Hercules. Furthermore, what will swearing by those whom you have abjured be, but a prevarication of faith along with idolatry? For who does not honour those by whom he swears? XXI. But it is a mark of timidity, when another binds you by his gods with an oath or some attestation, and you, lest you be understood, keep silent. For by keeping silent you equally confirm their majesty, on account of which you will seem to be bound.

What does it matter whether you confirm the gods of the nations to be gods by saying it or by hearing it? whether you swear by idols, or, adjured by another, acquiesce? Why should we not recognize the wiles of Satan, who, what he cannot accomplish through our own mouth, so acts as to accomplish it through the mouth of his own, bringing idolatry upon us through our ears? Certainly, whoever he be, he binds you either in a friendly or in a hostile encounter. If hostile, you are already called to the fight, and know that you must contend; if friendly, how much more safely will you transfer your engagement to the Lord, so as to dissolve the obligation of him through whom the evil one was seeking to bind you to the honour of idols, that is, to idolatry! All patience of this kind is idolatry. You honour those to whom, once they have been imposed, you have rendered your compliance.

I know a certain man — may the Lord pardon him — who, when it had been said to him in public during a lawsuit, 'May Jupiter be angry with you,' replied, 'Nay, with you.' What else would a heathen have done, who believed Jupiter to be a god? Even if he had not hurled back the curse through the same god, nor through any like Jupiter, he had confirmed Jupiter to be a god, through whom, by returning the curse, he had shown that he had unworthily borne the curse. For why should you be indignant on account of one whom you know to be nothing? Now if you rage, you already confirm that he is; and it will be idolatry, the profession of your fear: how much more, when through that very god you curse back, do you by the same act render to Jupiter the honour which he too rendered, who provoked you?

But the faithful man in such a case ought to laugh, not to rage; nay rather, according to the precept, not even to curse back through God, but plainly to bless through God, that you may both destroy idols and preach God and fulfil discipline. XXII. Likewise the one initiated into Christ will not endure to be blessed through the gods of the nations, so that he may always reject the unclean blessing and, turning it to himself in God, cleanse it. To be blessed through the gods of the nations is to be cursed through God. If I have given alms to someone, or bestowed some benefit, and he in turn invokes his gods, or the genius of the colony, to be propitious to me, then my offering or good work will be an honour to idols, through which he requites the grace of the blessing.

But why should he not know that I acted for God's sake, so that both God may rather be glorified, and the demons may not be honoured in that which I did on account of God? If God sees that I acted for His sake, He likewise sees that I did not wish to show that I had acted for His sake, and I have in a manner made His precept a thing offered to idols. Many say, 'no one ought to publish himself'; but I think that neither ought he to deny himself. For he denies, whoever dissembles in any cause and is held for a heathen; and assuredly every denial is idolatry, just as every idolatry is denial, whether in deeds or in words. XXIII.

But there is a certain species of this kind, in deed and in word, twice-edged and dangerous on both sides, though it flatters you as though it were free on both counts, since the deed is not seen because the word is not held. Borrowing money from the heathen under pledges, men who are placed under bond and have sworn give guarantees and deny themselves — they mean, of course, that they know the time of persecution and the place of the tribunal and the person of the governor. Christ prescribes that one must not swear. 'I wrote,' one says, 'but I said nothing: it is the tongue, not the letter, that kills.' Here I call in nature and conscience: nature, because the hand can write nothing — even though the tongue in dictating stays unmoved and quiet — which the soul has not dictated;

although the soul dictated it to the tongue itself as well — a thing either conceived by itself or handed on by another. Now, lest it be said, 'another dictated it,' here I appeal to conscience, whether the soul takes up what another dictated and, whether with the tongue accompanying or resting, transmits it to the hand. And it is well that the Lord said that transgression is committed in the mind and conscience. 'If,' He says, 'concupiscence or malice ascend into the heart of a man, you are held as for the deed.' You have therefore guarded against what plainly ascended into your heart, which you can neither contend that you were ignorant of, nor that you were unwilling. For when you guarded against it, you knew; when you knew, you assuredly willed; and it exists as much in deed as in thought. Nor can you exclude the greater crime by the lighter, so as to say that what you do not do is plainly made false by guarding against it.

'Yet I did not deny, because I did not swear.' Nay rather, even if you had done no such thing, you would nonetheless be said to swear, if you consented to have done it. The voice is not without force when silent in the writing-stylus, nor is the sound mute in the letters. But indeed Zacharias, punished with a temporary deprivation of voice, conversing with his mind, passes over the useless tongue; with his own hands he dictates from the heart and pronounces the name of his son without a mouth: he speaks in the stylus, he is heard in the wax — a hand clearer than any sound, a letter more vocal than any mouth. Ask whether he spoke, who was found to have spoken.

Let us pray to the Lord that no necessity of a contract of this kind may beset us; and if it so happen, that He may grant to the brethren the means of acting, or to us the constancy to break off every necessity, lest those denying letters, the surrogates of our mouth, be brought forth against us on the day of judgment, sealed with the seals no longer of advocates, but of angels. XXIV. Amid these rocks and bays, amid these shoals and straits of idolatry, faith sails, its sails spread by the Spirit of God, safe if wary, secure if watchful. But for those thrown out, the deep is unswimmable; for those dashed upon them, the shipwreck is inextricable; for those swallowed up, the drowning gulf in idolatry is unbreathable. Whatever billows of it choke a man, every whirlpool of it sucks down to the shades below. Let no one say:

'Who will guard against it so safely? One would have to go out of the world.' As though it were not worth as much to go out, as to stand in the world an idolater! Nothing can be easier than caution against idolatry, if the fear of it be uppermost in the head. Any necessity whatever is smaller when compared with peril so great. For this reason the Holy Spirit, when the apostles then deliberated, relaxed the bond and the yoke for us, that we might be at leisure for avoiding idolatry. This will be our law, the more fully to be administered the more it is disengaged; the peculiar law of Christians, by which we are recognized and examined by the heathen; this is to be set before those coming to the faith, and inculcated in those entering into the faith, that those coming may deliberate, that the observant may persevere, and that the non-observant may renounce themselves.

For let us see whether, according to the type of the ark, the raven too and the kite and the wolf and the dog and the serpent will be in the Church. Certainly the idolater is not counted in the type of the ark. No animal is figured as an idolater. What was not in the ark, let it not be in the Church. (Latin text from the edition of A. Reifferscheid, G. Wissowa, 1890. Transcribed by Roger Pearse, 2002.)