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| Of the Observance of Days Connected with Idolatry.
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Chapter XIII.—Of the
Observance of Days Connected with Idolatry.
But why speak of sacrifices and priesthoods? Of
spectacles, moreover, and pleasures of that kind, we have already
filled a volume of their own.254
| 254 The treatise De
Spectaculis [soon to follow, in this volume.] | In this place must be
handled the subject of holidays and other extraordinary solemnities,
which we accord sometimes to our wantonness, sometimes to our timidity,
in opposition to the common faith and Discipline. The first point,
indeed, on which I shall join issue is this: whether a servant of
God ought to share with the very nations themselves in matters of his kind
either in dress, or in food, or in any other kind of their gladness.
“To rejoice with the rejoicing, and grieve with the
grieving,”255
is said about
brethren by the apostle when exhorting to unanimity. But, for
these purposes, “There is nought of communion between
light and darkness,”256
| 256 See 2 Cor. vi. 14. In the De Spect. xxvi.
Tertullian has the same quotation (Oehler). And there, too, he adds, as
here, “between life and death.” | between life and
death or else we rescind what is written, “The world shall
rejoice, but ye shall grieve.”257
| 257 John xvi. 20. It is observable that Tertullian here
translates κόσμον by
“seculum.” | If we rejoice
with the world, there is reason to fear that with the world we shall
grieve too. But when the world rejoices, let us grieve; and when the
world afterward grieves, we shall rejoice. Thus, too, Eleazar258
in Hades,259
| 259 “Apud
inferos,” used clearly here by Tertullian of a place
of happiness. Augustine says he never finds it so used in Scripture.
See Ussher’s “Answer to a Jesuit” on the Article,
“He descended into hell.” [See Elucid. X. p. 59,
supra.] | (attaining
refreshment in Abraham’s bosom) and the rich man, (on the other
hand, set in the torment of fire) compensate, by an answerable
retribution, their alternate vicissitudes of evil and good. There
are certain gift-days, which with some adjust the claim of honour, with
others the debt of wages. “Now, then,” you say, “I
shall receive back what is mine, or pay back what is
another’s.” If men have consecrated for themselves this
custom from superstition, why do you, estranged as you are from all
their vanity, participate in solemnities consecrated to idols; as if
for you also there were some prescript about a day, short of the
observance of a particular day, to prevent your paying or receiving
what you owe a man, or what is owed you by a man? Give me the form
after which you wish to be dealt with. For why should you skulk
withal, when you contaminate your own conscience by your
neighbour’s ignorance? If you are not unknown to be a
Christian, you are tempted, and you act as if you were not a Christian
against your neighbour’s conscience; if, however, you shall be
disguised withal,260
| 260 i.e., if you
are unknown to be a Christian:
“dissimulaberis.” This is Oehler’s reading;
but Latinius and Fr. Junis would read “Dissimulaveris,”
="if you dissemble the fact” of being a Christian, which perhaps
is better. | you are the slave of
the temptation. At all events, whether in the latter or the former way,
you are guilty of being “ashamed of God.”261
| 261 So Mr. Dodgson renders
very well. |
But “whosoever shall be ashamed of Me in the presence of men, of
him will I too be ashamed,” says He, “in the presence of my
Father who is in the heavens.”262
| 262 Matt. x. 33; Mark viii. 38; Luke ix. 26; 2
Tim. ii. 12. | E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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