On Idolatry

The chief crime of the human race, the highest guilt of the world, the whole cause of judgment, is idolatry. For although each offense keeps its own character, although each is destined for judgment under its own name, yet it is summed up in the crime of idolatry. Set aside the titles and look at the deeds. The idolater is also a murderer. Do you ask whom he has killed? If it adds anything to the grandeur of the charge, not a stranger nor an enemy, but himself. By what snares? Those of his own error. With what weapon? With offense against God. With how many blows? As many as his idolatries. Whoever denies that the idolater has perished will deny that the idolater has committed murder. Likewise you may recognize adultery and debauchery in the same man; for whoever serves false gods is without doubt an adulterer of the truth, because everything false is adultery. So too he is sunk in debauchery. For who that works together with unclean spirits does not go about defiled and debauched? And indeed the holy Scriptures use the language of debauchery in reproaching idolatry. The nature of fraud, I think, is this: if someone seizes what belongs to another or withholds from another what is owed; and fraud committed against a man is surely the name of a very great crime. But idolatry defrauds God, denying him his honors and conferring them on others, so that it joins insult to fraud. And if fraud, as well as debauchery and adultery, brings death, then in these too idolatry is not cleared of the guilt of murder. After such crimes, so destructive, so devouring of salvation, the rest too, each in its own way and set out separately, show their character in idolatry. In it are also the lusts of the world. For what festival of idolatry is there without ambition in dress and ornament? In it are wantonness and drunkenness, since for the most part these festivals are frequented for the sake of food, the belly, and lust. In it is injustice. For what is more unjust than that which does not know the Father of justice? In it too is vanity, since its whole principle is vain. In it is lying, since its whole substance is a lie. So it comes about that everything is found in idolatry, and idolatry in everything. But in another way too: since all offenses savor of opposition to God, and nothing that savors of opposition to God is not assigned to the demons and unclean spirits to whom idols are made over, whoever commits an offense without doubt commits idolatry. For he does what belongs to the owners of the idols.

But let all the names of the other crimes depart to the particular nature of their own works, and let idolatry remain in what it is itself. A name so hostile to God is sufficient in itself, a substance of crime so rich, putting forth so many branches, spreading through so many veins, that it is chiefly on this account that the subject has been taken up: in how many ways we must guard against the wide reach of idolatry, since in many ways it overthrows the servants of God, not only when it goes unrecognized but also when it is disguised. Most people think that idolatry is to be understood simply in these ways alone: if someone burns incense, or sacrifices, or offers a sacrificial feast, or is bound to some sacred rites or priesthoods; just as if someone thought that adultery was to be found only in kisses and embraces and the actual joining of flesh, or that murder was to be counted only in the shedding of blood and the taking of life. But we are certain how much more widely the Lord extends these things, since He marks adultery even in lust, if someone has fixed his eye lustfully and stirred his soul unchastely, and since He judges murder even in a word of cursing or abuse, in every impulse of anger, and in neglect of love toward a brother; as John teaches that whoever hates his brother is a murderer. Otherwise the devil's ingenuity in malice, and God's lordship in the discipline by which He fortifies us against the devil's wide reach, would amount to little, if we were judged only for those offenses which even the nations have decreed are to be punished. How will our righteousness abound beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, as the Lord prescribed, unless we have perceived the abundance of its opposite, that is, unrighteousness? And if the head of unrighteousness is idolatry, the first thing is to be fortified against the abundance of idolatry, by recognizing it not only in its manifest forms.

For some time in the past there was no idol. Before the craftsmen of this monster had bubbled up, there were only temples and empty shrines, as traces of antiquity remain to this day in some places. Yet idolatry was practised, not under that name but in that work. For even today it can be practised outside a temple and without an idol. But when the devil brought into the world the makers of statues and images and likenesses of every kind, that crude business of human calamity obtained both its name and its growth from idols. From then on every art that produces an idol in any way became a source of idolatry. For it makes no difference whether a modeller shapes it, or an engraver carves it, or an embroiderer weaves it, because it does not matter of what material an idol is formed either, whether of plaster, of paints, of stone, of bronze, of silver, or of thread. For since idolatry takes place even without an idol, surely, when an idol is present, it makes no difference what kind it is, of what material, or of what shape, so that no one thinks that only that is to be held an idol which is consecrated in human form. For this the meaning of the word is needed. Eidos in Greek means “form”; from it, by diminution, eidōlon is derived; likewise with us forma has produced formula. So every form or little form claims to be called an idol. Hence idolatry is every service and servitude paid to any idol. Hence too every maker of an idol is guilty of one and the same crime; unless the people committed too little idolatry because they consecrated for themselves the image of a calf and not of a man!

God forbids an idol to be made as much as to be worshiped. As much as the making of something that can be worshiped comes first, so much prior is the command that it not be made, if it is not lawful to worship it. For this reason, namely to root out the material of idolatry, the divine law proclaims, “You shall not make an idol,” and adding, “nor a likeness of the things that are in heaven and on earth and in the sea,” it has forbidden such arts to the servants of God throughout the whole world. Enoch had already predicted that the demons and the spirits of the apostate angels would turn all the elements, the whole stock of the world, whatever is contained in heaven, in the sea, and on earth, into idolatry, so that they would be consecrated as God against God. So human error worships all things except the founder of all things Himself. Their images are idols; the consecration of the images is idolatry. Whatever idolatry commits must be charged to every maker of any idol whatever. Indeed, the same Enoch condemns in advance, in his threat, both the worshipers and the makers of idols together.⁠a And again: “I swear to you, sinners, that for the day of blood and of destruction sorrow is prepared. You who serve stones, and you who make images of gold and silver and wood and stone and clay, and serve phantoms and demons and infernal spirits and all errors not according to knowledge, you will find no help from them.” And Isaiah says: “You are witnesses whether there is a God besides me. And those who fashion and carve were not then: all are vain, who make what pleases them, which will not profit them.” And then that whole utterance which curses the makers as much as the worshipers. Its close is: “Know that their heart is ash and earth, and no one can deliver his soul.” In that passage David likewise includes the makers: “Let those who make them become like them,” he says. And what more should I, a man of small memory, suggest? What more should I recall from the Scriptures? As if either the voice of the Holy Spirit were not enough, or there were still any question whether the Lord cursed and condemned the very makers of those things, first of all, whose worshipers He curses and condemns!

Plainly I will answer more fully the excuses of craftsmen of this kind, who ought never to be admitted into the house of God, if anyone knows that discipline. That common retort, “I have nothing else to live by,” can be struck back more sharply: “Must you live, then? What have you to do with God, if you live by your own laws?” Then, since they dare to argue even from the Scriptures that the apostle said, “As each was found, so let him remain”: by that interpretation we can all remain in our sins! For none of us was found other than a sinner, since Christ came down for no other reason than to set sinners free. Likewise they say that the same apostle commanded, after his own example, that each should work with his own hands for his living. If this precept is to cover all hands, I suppose the thieves at the baths too live by their hands, and robbers work with their hands for their living, and forgers produce their false documents not with their feet but with their hands, while actors earn their living not with their hands alone but with all their limbs. Let the church, then, be open to all who support themselves by their hands and their own work, if there is no exception made of the arts which God's discipline does not accept. But someone says, against the proposition that likenesses are forbidden: “Why then did Moses make the image of a serpent out of bronze in the wilderness?” Figures that were laid down beforehand for some secret dispensation stand apart: not to repeal the law, but as a type of their own purpose. Otherwise, if we interpret these things as the adversaries of the law do, do we too, like the Marcionites, ascribe inconsistency to the Almighty, whom they destroy in this way as changeable, since in one place He forbids and in another commands? But if anyone fails to see that the figure of the bronze serpent, hung up, pointed as a type to the Lord's cross, which was to free us from serpents, that is, from the devil's angels, since through itself it hung up the devil, the serpent, slain; or whatever other exposition of that figure has been revealed to worthier men, so long as the apostle affirms that all things then happened to the people figuratively: it is enough that the same God both forbade in the law that a likeness be made and, by an extraordinary command, enjoined the likeness of a serpent. If you obey the same God, you have His law: “You shall not make a likeness.” If you look also to the later command about the likeness that was made, then you too imitate Moses: do not make any image against the law unless God has commanded you too.

If no law of God had forbidden us to make idols, and no voice of the Holy Spirit threatened the makers of idols no less than their worshipers, we would understand from our very sacrament that such arts are contrary to the faith. For how have we renounced the devil and his angels, if we make them? What divorce have we declared from those, I do not say with whom, but by whom we live? What discord have we taken up against those to whom you are indebted for your livelihood? Do you destroy by word what you build by deed? Preach one God, you who make so many? Preach the true God, you who make false ones? “I make them,” says someone, “but I do not worship them”: as if there were any reason why he dare not worship them except the same reason for which he ought not to make them either, namely the offense to God in both cases. In fact, you do worship them, you who make them so that they can be worshiped. And you worship them not with the vapor of some cheap savor but with your own spirit, not with the life of a beast spent for them but with your own life. To them you sacrifice your talent, to them you pour out your sweat as a libation, for them you kindle your skill. You are more to them than a priest, since it is through you that they have a priest; your diligence is their divinity. Do you deny that you worship what you make? But they do not deny it, for whom you slaughter this fatter, more gilded, and greater victim, your own salvation, all day long.

At this point the zeal of faith will plead, groaning: that a Christian should come from idols into the church, come from the adversary's workshop into the house of God, lift up to God the Father hands that are the mothers of idols, adore with those hands which outside are adored against God, bring to the body of the Lord those hands which give bodies to demons! Nor is this enough. It would be a small thing if they received from other hands what they defile; but they themselves even hand on to others what they have defiled. Makers of idols are elected into the ecclesiastical order! What wickedness! Once the Jews laid hands on Christ; these men assail His body every day. hands that ought to be cut off! Let them see now whether it was said merely by way of comparison: “If your hand causes you to stumble, cut it off.” What hands more deserve to be cut off than those in which the Lord's body is caused to stumble?

There are also kinds of many other arts which, even if they do not touch the making of idols, yet furnish, with the same guilt, the things without which idols have no power. For it makes no difference whether you build or adorn, if you have furnished an idol's temple, its altar, or its shrine, if you have beaten out its gold leaf or its insignia, or even built its house. Such work is greater, which confers on the idol not its image but its authority. If the need of a livelihood is pleaded so far, such men have other kinds of work too, which provide the means of living without departing from discipline, that is, without fashioning an idol. The plasterer knows how to mend roofs, lay on stucco, line a cistern, run moldings, and work many other ornaments besides images in relief on walls. The painter too knows his wider scope, and the marble-mason, the bronze-worker, and every engraver, and their other work is certainly far easier. For if a man can draw a statue, how much more easily can he paint a sideboard? If he can carve a Mars out of lime-wood, how much more quickly can he put together a cupboard? There is no art that is not either the mother or a relative of another art; none stands apart from another. There are as many veins of the arts as there are desires of men. “But there is a difference in wages and in the price of handiwork.” Likewise there is a difference in labor too. A smaller wage is made up by more frequent work. How many walls want statues? How many temples and shrines are built for idols? But how many houses, official residences, baths, and apartment blocks? Slippers and sandals are gilded every day; Mercury and Serapis not every day. Let that suffice for the profit of the crafts. Luxury and ambition are more common than all superstition. Ambition will more readily want dishes and cups than superstition will. Luxury too spends more on garlands than festivals do. Since, then, we urge men to those kinds of crafts which do not touch an idol or the things that belong to an idol, and since the things that men use are often also used for idols, we must take care of this too, that nothing be demanded from our hands by anyone, with our knowledge, for the service of idols. If we allow this, and do not act with the remedies now customary, I do not think we are free from the contagion of idolatry, whose hands are found, not unknowingly, in the service, honor, and use of demons.

Among the arts we also notice certain professions liable to idolatry. Of astrologers one ought not even to speak. But since someone in these days has challenged us, defending his continuance in that profession, I will say a few words. I do not allege that he honors idols, whose names he has inscribed in the heavens, and to whom he has made over all God's power, so that men think they need not seek God, presuming that we are driven by the unchangeable decree of the stars. I put forward one point: that those angels, deserters of God, lovers of women, were also the betrayers of this curious art, and for that reason too were condemned by God. divine sentence, holding firm even down to the earth, to which even the ignorant bear witness! Astrologers are expelled, as their angels were. The city and Italy are forbidden to astrologers, as heaven was to their angels. Disciples and masters suffer the same penalty of exile. “But magi came from the east.” We know the kinship between magic and astrology. So interpreters of the stars were the first to announce the birth of Christ, the first to bring Him gifts. By this, I suppose, they put Christ in their debt! What then? Shall the religion of those magi now be the patron of astrologers too? Astrology today, no doubt, is about Christ: it observes and proclaims the stars of Christ, not of Saturn and Mars and any other of the same order of the dead! But that science was permitted until the gospel, so that, once Christ was born, no one should thereafter interpret anyone's nativity from the heavens. For they offered that frankincense and myrrh and gold to the infant Lord at that time as the close, as it were, of worldly sacrifice and glory, which Christ was to take away. As for the dream which, no doubt by God's will, was suggested to those same magi, that they should go to their own country, but by another way, not the one by which they had come: it means that they should not walk in their former sect. It was not that Herod might not pursue them, for he did not pursue them, not even knowing that they had departed by another way, since he did not know the way they had come either. So we ought to understand the “way” as sect and discipline. The magi, then, were commanded to walk otherwise from then on. So too that other kind of magic, which works by miracles and even rivalled Moses, God's patience let run on until the gospel. For from then on Simon Magus, too, already a believer, because he was still thinking something of his juggling sect, namely to buy among the miracles of his profession the Holy Spirit too through the laying on of hands, was cursed by the apostles and cast out of the faith; and another magus, who was with Sergius Paulus, because he opposed those same apostles, was punished with the loss of his sight. The astrologers too, I believe, would have met the same fate, if any had come across the apostles. Yet when magic is punished, of which astrology is a species, surely the species is condemned in the genus. After the gospel you will nowhere find sophists, Chaldeans, enchanters, diviners, or magi, except as plainly punished. “Where is the wise man, where the scribe, where the debater 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. If you knew it, you ought also to have known that you would have nothing to do with that profession. It, which foretells the critical years of others, should have told you of its own danger. You have neither part nor lot in that system. He cannot hope for the kingdom of heaven whose finger or pointer abuses heaven.

We must also inquire about schoolmasters, and the other teachers of literature too. In fact, there is no doubt that they are bordering on idolatry in many ways. First, they must proclaim the gods of the nations, and declare their names, genealogies, fables, and all their honorific trappings; then they must observe their solemnities and festivals, since they reckon their income by them. What schoolmaster will fail to keep the Quinquatria, even without a table of the seven idols? The very first fee of a new pupil he consecrates to the honor and name of Minerva, so that, even if he is not said in so many words to be profaned by any idol through food offered to idols, he is avoided as an idolater. What? Is there less defilement in it? Is gain better that is dedicated to an idol by name and by honor? As the Minervalia are Minerva's, so the Saturnalia are Saturn's, which must be celebrated even by little slaves at the time of the Saturnalia. New Year's gifts too must be solicited, and the Septimontium kept, and all the fees for midwinter and for the feast of Dear Kinship exacted; the schools must be garlanded for Flora; the flaminicae and aediles sacrifice when they take office; the school is honored with holidays. The same is done on an idol's birthday; every pomp of the devil is attended. Who will think these things befit a Christian, except one who 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 literature, it will not be lawful to learn it either; and how would anyone be trained for ordinary human prudence, or for any understanding or action, since literature is the instrument for all of life? How can we reject secular studies, without which divine studies are impossible?” Let us, then, look at the necessity of literary education, and consider that in part it can be admitted and in part avoided. It is more fitting for believers to learn literature than to teach it, for the principle of learning is different from that of teaching. If a believer teaches literature, then without doubt, while he teaches, he commends the praises of idols inserted in it; while he hands them on, he affirms them; while he mentions them, he bears witness to them. He seals the gods themselves with this very name, although the law forbids, as we have said, that gods be named and that this name be taken in vain. Hence faith is first built up for the devil from the very beginnings of education. Ask whether he commits idolatry who catechizes about idols. But when a believer learns these things, if he already understands what they are, he neither receives nor admits them; much more if he has long understood. Or when he begins to understand, he must first understand what he learned first, that is, about God and the faith. So he will spit those things out and not receive them, and he will be as safe as one who knowingly takes poison from someone who does not know it, and does not drink it. For him necessity is counted as an excuse, because he cannot learn otherwise. But it is as much easier not to teach literature than not to learn it, as it is easier for a believing pupil to stay away from the other defilements of the schools arising from public and private festivals than for a master not to take part in them.

If we reconsider the rest of the offenses from their origins: first covetousness, the root of all evils, by which some have been ensnared and have suffered shipwreck concerning the faith (and covetousness has twice been called idolatry by the same apostle); then lying, covetousness's servant (I say nothing of perjury, since not even swearing is permitted): is trade suited to the servant of God? Besides, if covetousness departs, what reason is there for acquiring? When the reason for acquiring ceases, there will be no need to trade. Suppose now some justice in gain, secure from any charge of covetousness and lying: I think it falls into the crime of idolatry, if it deals in what concerns the very soul and spirit of idols, what fattens every demon. Is not that the chief idolatry? Let them see to it whether the same wares, I mean incense and the other foreign goods for the sacrifice of idols, are also of use to men for medicinal ointments, and to us besides for the comfort of burial. Certainly when the processions, the priesthoods, and the sacrifices of idols are furnished by your risks, your losses, your inconveniences, your plans, your journeys and trading, what else are you shown to be but the idols' agent? Let no one argue that in this way a case can be raised against every trade. The graver an offense is, the more it widens the care of our watchfulness in proportion to the danger, so that we withdraw not only from the offenses themselves but also from the means by which they are done. For though a thing is done by others, it makes no difference if it is done through me. In nothing ought I to be necessary to another when he does what is unlawful for me. From the very fact that I am forbidden to do something, I ought to understand that I must take care it is not done through me. In short, in another case of no lighter guilt I observe this rule. For since debauchery is forbidden me, I give others neither help nor connivance in it. For since I have kept my own flesh away from brothels, I recognize that I cannot practise pimping or that kind of gain on another's behalf. So too the prohibition of murder shows me that a trainer of gladiators is also barred from the church: he will not fail to do himself what he supplies for another to do. Here is a still closer precedent. If a contractor for the public sacrificial victims comes to the faith, will you allow him to remain in that business? Or if one who is already a believer has undertaken it, will you think he should be kept in the church? I think not, unless someone will also turn a blind eye to the incense-seller. The supplying of blood, no doubt, goes to some, and of odors to others! If before there were idols in the world idolatry, still shapeless, was carried on with these wares; if even now the work of idolatry is performed, mostly without an idol, by burning odors; is not the incense-seller of even greater service to the demons? For idolatry is more easily carried on without an idol than without the incense-seller's wares. Let us question the conscience of faith itself. With what face will a Christian incense-seller, if he passes through the temples, spit on and blow out the smoking altars for which he himself has provided? With what consistency will he exorcise his own foster children, to whom he provides his house as a storeroom? If he does cast out a demon, let him not flatter himself on his faith, for he has not cast out an enemy. He should easily have won his request from one whom he feeds every day. So no art, no profession, no trade that ministers anything to the furnishing or forming of idols can be free from the charge of idolatry; unless we understand idolatry as something wholly other than the service of the idols that are to be worshiped.

We flatter ourselves wrongly about the necessities of making a living, if after the faith has been sealed we say, “I have nothing to live on.” Here I will now answer that abrupt proposition more fully. It is said too late. For you ought to have deliberated beforehand, after the example of that most provident builder who first reckons the cost of the work against his means, so that, having begun, he is not later ashamed at running short. But even now you have the Lord's sayings and examples, which take away every excuse from you. For what do you say? “I shall be in want.” But the Lord calls the needy blessed. “I shall have no food.” But “Do not be anxious,” He says, “about food”; and for clothing we have the lilies as an example. “I needed property.” Yet all things are to be sold and divided among the needy. “But I must provide for my children and my posterity.” “No one who puts his hand to the plow and looks back is fit for the work.” “But I was under contract.” “No one can serve two masters.” If you wish to be the Lord's disciple, you must take up your cross and follow the Lord: that is, your hardships and tortures, or at least your body, which is shaped like a cross. Parents, wives, and children will have to be left for God's sake. Do you hesitate about arts and trades and professions, even for the sake of children and parents? It was shown to us long ago that dear ones, crafts, and business are to be abandoned for the Lord's sake, when James and John, called by the Lord, left their father and their boat; when Matthew was roused from the tax booth; when even burying a father was too slow for faith. None of those whom the Lord chose said, “I have nothing to live on.” Faith does not fear hunger. It knows that hunger too is to be despised for God's sake no less than every kind of death. It has learned not to regard life; how much less food? How few have fulfilled these things! But what is hard with men is easy with God. Yet let us not so flatter ourselves on the gentleness and mercy of God as to make concessions to necessity even to the point of kinship with idolatry; but let us avoid its every breath like a plague, even from afar, not only in the things we have set out above, but in the whole range of human superstition, whether made over to their gods, or to the dead, or to kings, as belonging to the same unclean spirits: now through sacrifices and priesthoods, now through shows and the like, now through festival days.

But why should I speak of sacrifices and priesthoods? And on the shows and pleasures of that kind we have already filled a volume of their own. At this point we must take up festival days and other extraordinary solemnities, which we sometimes grant to our wantonness and sometimes to our timidity, sharing with the nations in idolatrous things against faith and discipline. On this I will first take my stand: whether the servant of God ought to share with the nations themselves in things of this kind, whether in dress, or in food, or in any other form of their rejoicing. “To rejoice with those who rejoice and to mourn with those who mourn” was said by the apostle about the fellow believers, urging them to be of one mind. But in these things there is no communion between light and darkness, between life and death; or else we tear up what is written: “The world will rejoice, but you will mourn.” If we rejoice with the world, we must fear that we will also mourn with the world. But let us mourn while the world rejoices, and when the world afterwards mourns, we shall rejoice. So too Eleazar, who obtained refreshment in the underworld in Abraham's bosom, and on the other side the rich man, placed in the torment of fire, balance by a matching repayment the alternating turns of evils and goods. There are certain days of gifts, which for some discharge a claim of honor, for others a debt of wages. “Now, then,” you say, “I will receive what is mine or pay what is another's.” If men have consecrated this custom to themselves out of superstition, why do you, a stranger to all their vanity, share in solemnities offered to idols, as though for you too there were a rule about the day that forbids you to pay or receive what you owe to a man, or a man owes you, apart from the observance of that day? Settle the manner in which you want to be dealt with. For why should you even hide, when you defile your own conscience by another's ignorance? If it is known that you are a Christian, you are being tempted, and you act against another's conscience as though you were not a Christian; but if you also disguise it, you have been tempted and have surrendered. Certainly, either way, you are guilty of being ashamed of God. “But whoever is ashamed of me before men,” he says, “of him I too will be ashamed before my Father who is in heaven.”

But many have now persuaded themselves that it is pardonable if at times they do what the heathen do, so that the name is not blasphemed. But the blasphemy we must avoid in every way is, I think, this: if one of us leads a heathen to just blasphemy by fraud, or injury, or insult, or other grounds for a worthy complaint, in which the name is deservedly attacked, so that the Lord too is deservedly angry. Otherwise, if it was said of every kind of blasphemy, “Because of you my name is blasphemed,” we all perish, since the whole circus, with its wicked votes, assails the name through no fault of ours. Let us give up being Christians, and it will not be blasphemed! No: let it be blasphemed, while we are keeping discipline and not departing from it, while we are approved and not rejected. blasphemy akin to martyrdom, which bears witness that I am a Christian at the very moment it detests me for being one! The cursing of a discipline faithfully kept is a blessing on the name. “If I wished to please men,” he says, “I should not be the servant of Christ.” But the same apostle elsewhere bids us take care to please all: “Just as I,” he says, “please all in all things.” Was it, no doubt, by celebrating the Saturnalia and the Kalends of January that he pleased men? Or by modesty and patience? By gravity, by kindness, by integrity? Likewise when he says, “I have become all things to all men, that I might win all,” was he an idolater to idolaters? A heathen to heathens? Worldly to the worldly? And 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 certainly does not slacken the reins of association so far that, since we must live and mix with sinners, we may also sin with them. Where there is social contact, which the apostle allows, there is also sinning, which no one permits. It is lawful to live with the heathen; it is not lawful to die with them. Let us live with all; let us rejoice together in the fellowship of nature, not of superstition. We are equals in soul, not in discipline; joint owners of the world, not of error. But if we have no right of fellowship in such things with outsiders, how much more wicked is it to celebrate them among fellow believers! Who can endure or defend this? The Holy Spirit reproaches the Jews for their festival days: “Your sabbaths,” he says, “and new moons and ceremonies my soul hates.” By us, to whom the sabbaths are foreign, and the new moons, and the feasts once loved by God, the Saturnalia and the New Year's and Midwinter festivals and the Matronalia are frequented; gifts come and go, and New Year's presents; games resound, banquets clamor. the better faithfulness of the nations to their own sect, which claims for itself no solemnity of the Christians! Neither the Lord's day nor Pentecost, even if they knew of them, would they have shared with us; for they would fear to seem Christians. We are not afraid of being declared heathen! If some indulgence must be granted to the flesh, you have, I will not say as many days of your own, but more. For to the heathen each festival day comes once a year; to you, every eighth day. Pick out each of the solemnities of the nations and set them out in order: they will not be able to fill up a Pentecost.

“But let your works shine,” he says. Yet now it is our shops and our doors that shine! You will now find more doors of the heathen without lamps and laurels than of Christians. What do you think about this kind of thing too? If it is an honor to an idol, then without doubt the honor of an idol is idolatry. If it is done for a man's sake, let us reflect that all idolatry is done for men's sake; let us reflect that all idolatry is the worship of men, since it is agreed even among their own people that the very gods of the nations were once men. So it makes no difference whether this superstition is offered to men of an earlier age or of this one. Idolatry has been condemned not because of the persons to whom it is offered, but because of those services themselves, which belong to demons. “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's.” It is well that He added, “and to God the things that are God's.” What, then, are Caesar's? Those, namely, about which the question was then being raised, whether the tax should be paid to Caesar or not. So the Lord asked for the coin to be shown Him and inquired about the image, whose it was; and when He heard “Caesar's,” he said, “Give to Caesar the things that are Caesar's, and to God the things that are God's”: that is, the image of Caesar, which is on the coin, to Caesar, and the image of God, which is in man, to God; so that you give to Caesar your money, and to God yourself. Otherwise, what will be God's, if all things are Caesar's? “So,” you say, “are lamps before the doors and laurel on the doorposts an honor to God?” Certainly not because they are an honor to God, but because they honor him who is honored with such services in God's place, as far as is manifest, not to speak of the hidden working that reaches the demons. For we ought to be certain, if any are unaware of it through ignorance of secular literature, that among the Romans there are gods even of doors: Cardea, named from hinges, Forculus from doors, Limentinus from the threshold, and Janus himself from the gate. And we certainly know that although the names are empty and invented, yet, when they are brought into superstition, they draw to themselves demons and every unclean spirit through the bond of consecration. Otherwise demons have no name of their own individually, but they find a name where they find a pledge. Among the Greeks too we read of Apollo Thyraeus and the Antelii, demons who preside over doors. Foreseeing these things from the beginning, the Holy Spirit foretold through the most ancient prophet Enoch that even doors would come into superstition. For we see other doors too worshiped in the baths. But if there are beings who are worshiped in doors, the lamps and laurels will belong to them. Whatever you do to a door, you will have done to an idol. At this point I also call to witness the authority of God, because it is not safe to keep back what has been shown to one person, surely for the sake of all. I know a brother who was severely rebuked in a vision that very night, because his slaves had garlanded his door when public rejoicings were suddenly announced. And yet he had not garlanded it himself, nor ordered it; for he had gone out beforehand and, on his return, had reprimanded the deed. So strictly are we judged by God in such matters, even in the discipline of our household. So, as regards the honors due to kings or emperors, we have a sufficient rule: that we ought to be in all obedience, according to the apostle's precept, subject to magistrates, princes, and powers, but within the limits of discipline, so long as we keep ourselves separate from idolatry. For this is why the example of the three brothers went before us, who, obedient in other respects to King Nebuchadnezzar, most steadfastly refused to honor his image, proving that whatever is exalted beyond the measure of human honor to the likeness of divine loftiness is idolatry. So too Daniel, submissive to Darius in everything else, remained in his service only so long as he was free of danger to his discipline. For rather than undergo that, he no more feared the king's lions than they had feared the king's fire. Let those, then, light lamps every day who have no light; let those fix to their doorposts laurels that will afterwards burn, over whom the fires hang; to them belong both the testimonies of darkness and the omens of punishments. You are the light of the world and a tree ever green. If you have renounced temples, do not make your door a temple. I have said too little: if you have renounced brothels, do not clothe your house with the look of a new brothel.

As for the duties of private and public solemnities, such as the assumption of the toga of manhood, betrothals, weddings, and name-givings, I would think there is no danger in observing them from the breath of idolatry that intrudes on them. For the causes for which the duty is performed must be considered. I think these are clean in themselves, because neither the garment of manhood, nor the ring, nor the marriage union derives from the honor of any idol. In short, I find no dress cursed by God except women's dress on a man: “Cursed,” he says, “is everyone who puts on women's clothes.” But the toga is manly even by its name. Nor does God forbid weddings to be celebrated any more than a name to be given. “But sacrifices are attached to these.” Let me be invited, provided the ground of the duty is not the sacrifice, and the performance of my service may be as much as they please. Would that we could not even see what it is sinful for us to do! But since the evil one has so surrounded the world with idolatry, it will be permitted to be present at some things which make us courteous to a man, not to an idol. Plainly, if invited to a priestly function and a sacrifice, I will not go, for that is an office proper to an idol; nor will I serve such things with advice, or money, or any other help. If I attend because I was invited for the sake of the sacrifice, I shall be a partaker in idolatry; if some other reason joins me to the one sacrificing, I shall be only a spectator of the sacrifice.

But what will believing slaves or freedmen do, and likewise officials in attendance on masters, patrons, or governors when they sacrifice? Well, if anyone hands wine to one who is sacrificing, indeed, if he helps with any word necessary to the sacrifice, he will be counted a minister of idolatry. Mindful of this rule, we can also provide service to magistrates and powers, after the example of the patriarchs and the other ancestors, who attended idolatrous kings up to the limit of idolatry. Hence a debate arose recently whether a servant of God may take up the administration of any rank or power, if he can keep himself untouched by every form of idolatry, whether by some favor or even by astuteness; just as Joseph and Daniel, clean of idolatry, administered both rank and power in the ornament and purple of the prefecture of all Egypt and of Babylonia. Let us grant, then, that someone might succeed in holding some office in the mere name of the office, without sacrificing or lending his authority to sacrifices; without contracting for victims, without assigning the care of temples, without managing their revenues, without giving shows at his own or at public expense or presiding over them; without proclaiming or decreeing any solemnity, without even taking an oath; and further, as to what belongs to power, without judging anyone in a matter of life or of honor (you may allow him cases about money), without condemning or forejudging, without binding anyone, imprisoning or torturing anyone; if it is credible that this can be done.

Now we must deal with the mere trappings and apparatus of office. Each person has his proper dress, both for daily use and for honor and rank. So that purple and the gold ornament of the neck were insignia of rank among the Egyptians and Babylonians in the same way as the bordered, striped, or palm-embroidered togas and the golden crowns of the provincial priests are now, but not on the same terms. For they were conferred only as a title of honor on those who had earned the intimacy of kings; hence they were called the kings' “purpled ones,” from the purple, as with us candidates are named from the white toga; but not so that that apparel was also bound up with priesthoods or with any offices of idols. For if it had been so, surely men of such holiness and constancy would at once have refused the defiled garments, and it would have been evident at once that Daniel was not devoted to idols and did not worship Bel or the dragon, which became evident only much later. That simple purple, then, was among the barbarians a mark not yet of rank but of free birth. For just as Joseph, who had been a slave, and Daniel, who had changed his status through captivity, obtained the citizenship of Egypt and Babylon through the dress of barbarian free birth, so among us believers too, if it should be necessary, the bordered toga may be allowed to boys and the stola to girls, as marks of birth, not of power; of family, not of honor; of rank, not of superstition. But the purple and the other insignia of ranks and powers, dedicated from the beginning to the idolatry bound up with those ranks and powers, bear the stain of their profanation, since, moreover, bordered and striped togas and broad stripes are put on the idols themselves, and fasces and rods are carried before them; and rightly. For the demons are the magistrates of this world; they bear the fasces and the purple as the insignia of one college. What will you gain, then, if you use the apparel but do not carry out its functions? No one can appear clean in unclean things. If you put on a tunic defiled in itself, perhaps it may not be defiled by you, but you cannot be clean because of it. And now you who argue from Joseph and Daniel, know that old and new, rude and polished, begun and completed, servile and free things are not always to be compared. For they were slaves even by condition; but you, the slave of no one, in so far as you belong to Christ alone, who has freed you even from the captivity of the world, ought to act after the Lord's pattern. That Lord walked in humility and obscurity, with no certain home: for “the Son of Man,” He says, “has nowhere to lay His head”; plain in dress, for otherwise He would not have said, “See, those who wear soft clothing are in kings' houses”; finally, without glory in face and appearance, as Isaiah too had foretold. If He exercised no right of power even over His own, for whom He performed a menial service; if, finally, conscious of His kingdom, He fled from being made king, He gave the fullest pattern to His own by directing them away from every eminence and trapping, both of rank and of power. For who would have used them more than the Son of God? What fasces, and how many, would have escorted Him; what purple would have bloomed on His shoulders; what gold would have shone on His head, had He not judged the glory of the world alien both to Himself and to His own? So what He did not want, He rejected; what He rejected, He condemned; what He condemned, He counted as the pomp of the devil. For He would not have condemned it, had it been His own; and things that are not God's can belong to no one but the devil. If you have renounced the devil's pomp, know that whatever of it you touch is idolatry. Let this at least remind you that all the powers and ranks of this world are not only alien but hostile to God: that through them punishments have been decreed against the servants of God, and through them too the penalties prepared for the impious go unheeded. “But both my birth and my wealth are an obstacle to me against idolatry.” Remedies for avoiding it cannot be lacking; since, even if they were, there remains that one remedy by which you will be made a happier magistrate, not on earth but in heaven. (Isaiah 53:2; John 6:15)

In the preceding chapter the question of military service too might seem to have been settled, since it lies between rank and power. But the present question is whether a believer may turn to military service, and whether soldiers may be admitted to the faith, even the rank and file or any lower grade, who are under no necessity of sacrifices or capital judgments. There is no agreement between the divine oath and the human, the standard of Christ and the standard of the devil, 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 wore a buckle, and John is wearing with a leather belt, and Joshua son of Nun leads an army, and the people waged war,” if one wants to play with words. But how will he wage war, indeed, how will he serve as a soldier even in peace, without the sword, which the Lord has taken away? For although soldiers had come to John and received a rule to observe, and even a centurion had believed, the Lord afterwards, in disarming Peter, unbelted every soldier. No dress is lawful among us that is assigned to an unlawful act.

But since the life of divine discipline is endangered not only by deeds but also by words (for as it is written, “Look at the man and his deeds,” so too, “By your mouth you will be justified”), we must remember that the inroad of idolatry is to be guarded against in words as well, whether it comes from the fault of habit or of timidity. The law forbids the gods of the nations to be named: not, of course, so that we should not pronounce their names, which daily interaction forces us to say. For it must very often be said: “You will find him in the temple of Aesculapius,” and “I live in the street of Isis,” and “He has been made priest of Jupiter,” and many other things of this kind, since names of this kind are also given to men. For I do not honor Saturn if I call him by his name; I no more honor him than I honor Marcus if I call him Marcus. But it says: “Do not mention the name of other gods, nor let it be heard from your mouth.” What it commands is that we should not call them gods. For in the first part of the law too it says, “You shall not take the name of the Lord your God in vain,” that is, for an idol. So whoever has honored an idol with the name of God has fallen into idolatry. And if one must speak of gods, something must be added to make it clear that I do not call them gods. For Scripture too names gods, but adds “their” or “of the nations”; as David, when he had named gods, where he says, “But the gods of the nations are demons.” But this I have set out rather as groundwork for what follows. Moreover, it is a fault of habit to say “Mehercule” or “Medius Fidius,” with the added ignorance of some who do not know that it is an oath by Hercules. But what will swearing by those whom you have forsworn be, if not a betrayal of the faith together with idolatry? For who does not honor those by whom he swears?

It is a matter of timidity, however, when another binds you by his gods with an oath or some other attestation, and you keep quiet so as not to be recognized. For by keeping quiet you equally confirm their majesty, on whose account you will seem to have been bound. What difference does it make whether you confirm the gods of the nations by calling them gods or by hearing them so called? Whether you swear by idols, or acquiesce when adjured by another? Why do we not recognize the cunning of Satan, who, what he cannot accomplish through our own mouth, contrives to accomplish through the mouth of his servants, bringing idolatry into us through our ears? Certainly, whoever the person is, he binds you in either a friendly or a hostile encounter. If hostile, you are already called to battle and know that you must fight; if friendly, how much more safely will you transfer your pledge to the Lord, so as to dissolve the obligation laid on you by the one through whom the evil one was trying to bind you to the honor of idols, that is, to idolatry. All passive acceptance of this kind is idolatry. You honor those whose invocation you have obeyed. I know of a man, may the Lord forgive him, who, when someone said to him in public during a quarrel, “May Jupiter be angry with you,” answered, “No, with you.” What else would a heathen have done, who believed Jupiter a god? Even if he had not thrown back the curse by the same god, or by any like Jupiter, he had confirmed Jupiter as a god, by showing, in cursing back, that he took it ill to be cursed by him. For why be indignant at being cursed by one whom you know to be nothing? For if you rage, you confirm that he exists, and your fear will be a profession of idolatry; how much more, when you curse back by him, do you do honor to Jupiter just as the one who provoked you did? But a believer ought to laugh at such things, not rage; indeed, according to the precept, he ought not even to curse back by God, but plainly to bless by God, so that he may destroy idols, proclaim God, and fulfill discipline.

Likewise one initiated into Christ will not endure being blessed by the gods of the nations without always rejecting the unclean blessing and cleansing it by turning it toward God. To be blessed by the gods of the nations is to be cursed by God. If I give alms to someone, or confer some benefit, and he prays that his gods or the genius of the colony may be propitious to me, then my offering or deed will become an honor to the idols through which he repays the favor with a blessing. But why should he not know that I did it for God's sake, so that God rather may be glorified and demons not be honored in what I did for God? If God sees that I did it for His sake, He equally sees that I did not want to show that I did it for His sake; and in a way I have made His precept an offering to idols. Many say that no one ought to publish himself; but I think, nor to deny himself either. For whoever disguises himself in any matter and is taken for a heathen denies; and surely every denial is idolatry, just as all idolatry is denial, whether in deeds or in words.

But there is a certain kind of this fault, in deed and in word at once, double-edged and harmful on both sides, though it flatters you as if it were free of both, since the deed does not seem to be a deed, because the word is not held to have been spoken. Those who borrow money from heathens on pledges give sworn guarantees in writing and so deny themselves; no doubt they think the only occasion for denial is the time of persecution, the place of the tribunal, and the person of the governor. Christ prescribes that there should be no swearing. “I wrote,” he says, “but I said nothing; it is the tongue, not the letter, that kills.” Here I call nature and conscience to witness: nature, because the hand can write nothing that the soul has not dictated, even if the tongue, in dictating, is still, motionless and quiet; though the soul dictates to the tongue itself, either what it conceived itself or what was handed to it by another. Now, so that no one can say, “Another dictated it,” here I appeal to conscience, whether the soul does not take up what another dictated and pass it on to the hand, whether the tongue goes along or stays at rest. And it is well that the Lord said that sin is committed in the mind and conscience. “If,” he says, “lust or malice has entered a man's heart, you are held guilty as for the deed.” So you have given a guarantee which plainly entered your heart, and which you can claim neither not to have known nor not to have willed. For when you gave it, you knew; and when you knew, you certainly willed; and so it is in deed as much as in thought. Nor can you exclude the greater crime by pleading a lighter one, saying that a falsehood is committed, to be sure, by guaranteeing what you do not do. “Yet I did not deny, because I did not swear.” On the contrary, even if you had done nothing of the kind, you would still be said to have sworn, if you consented. A silent voice in the pen, a mute sound in the letters, is of no avail. Yet Zechariah, punished with a temporary loss of voice, when he conversed with his mind, passed by his useless tongue, dictated with his hands from his heart, and pronounced his son's name without his mouth: he speaks with the pen; his hand is heard in the wax more clearly than any sound; the letter is more vocal than any mouth. Ask whether he spoke who is found to have spoken. Let us pray the Lord that no necessity of such a contract may beset us, and, if it should happen, that he may give the fellow believers the means to help, or give us the constancy to break off every necessity, so that those letters of denial, representatives of our speech, are not brought out against us on the day of judgment, sealed with the seals, not of witnesses now, but of angels.

Among these rocks and bays, among these shallows and straits of idolatry, faith sails with the Spirit of God filling her sails, safe if cautious, secure if watchful. But for those thrown overboard there is a deep that cannot be swum out of; for those driven aground, a shipwreck from which there is no escape; for those swallowed up, a drowning in idolatry where no breath can be drawn. Whatever waves of it choke, every whirlpool of it sucks down to the underworld. Let no one say, “Who will guard himself so safely? We shall have to go out of the world.” As if it were not as well worth going out of it as standing in the world as an idolater! Nothing can be easier than caution against idolatry, if the fear of it comes first. Any necessity whatever is less than so great a danger. For this reason, when the apostles were then taking counsel, the Holy Spirit loosened the bond and the yoke for us, so that we might be free to avoid idolatry. This will be our law, all the more fully to be kept because it is so unencumbered, the proper law of Christians, by which we are recognized and tested by the heathen. It must be set before those approaching the faith and impressed on those entering the faith, so that those approaching may deliberate, those observing it may persevere, and those not observing it may renounce their claim to be Christians. For we shall see whether, according to the type of the ark, the raven, the kite, the wolf, the dog, and the serpent will be in the church. Certainly no idolater is found in the type of the ark. No animal was made a figure of the idolater. What was not in the ark, let it not be in the church.