On the Shows 1

Servants of God, you who are just now drawing near to God, learn, and you who have already testified and confessed that you have drawn near, recall, what the state of faith, the reason of truth, and the rule of discipline is which, among the other errors of the world, takes away also the pleasures of the shows, lest anyone sin either through ignorance or through pretence. For such is the power of pleasures that it draws out ignorance into an opportunity and corrupts knowledge into pretence. Toward both, perhaps, the opinions of the heathen may still flatter someone, since in this matter they are accustomed to argue against us thus: that such delights of the eyes or ears, coming from outside, are no hindrance to religion in the mind and conscience; and that God is not offended by the enjoyment of man, which it is no crime to enjoy in its own time and place, so long as fear and honor toward God remain intact. But this is precisely what we are preparing to show: how these things are not compatible with true religion and true obedience toward the true God. There are some who think that Christians, a race ready for death, are trained to this obstinacy by the renunciation of pleasures, so that they may more easily despise life when its moorings, as it were, have been cut, and may not long for what they have already made superfluous to themselves; so that this would be thought to have been laid down by design and human foresight rather than by divine precept. As if, forsooth, those who continued in such pleasures would be loath to die for the Lord! And yet, even if it were so, the steadfastness of our discipline would owe full obedience to so fitting a design.