On the Shows 20

How vain, then, nay how desperate, is the argument of those who, doubtless from reluctance to lose a pleasure, plead that no mention of this abstinence is set down specifically or by place in the Scriptures, directly forbidding the servant of God to mingle in such gatherings! I recently heard a new defense from a certain lover of shows. “The sun,” he said, “nay God himself, watches from heaven and is not defiled.” Certainly; and the sun sends its rays into the sewer too and is not polluted. Would that God watched none of the crimes of men, so that we might all escape judgment! But he watches robberies too; he watches falsehoods and adulteries and frauds and idolatries and the shows themselves. And for that very reason we will not watch, lest we be seen by him who watches all things. You are comparing, man, the accused and the judge: the accused, who is accused because he is seen, and the judge, who is judge because he sees. Do we then pursue frenzy outside the bounds of the circus, and aim at unchastity outside the doorways of the theatre, and at insolence outside the stadium, and at mercilessness outside the amphitheatre, because God has eyes outside the vaults and tiers and … too? We err: nowhere and never is that excused which God condemns; nowhere and never is that lawful which is not lawful always and everywhere. This is the integrity of truth, and, owed to it, the fullness of discipline, the constancy of fear, and the faithfulness of obedience: not to change one's sentence nor vary one's judgment. What is truly good or evil cannot be otherwise.