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| Chapter III.
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Chapter III.
Fortified by this knowledge against heathen views,
let us rather turn to the unworthy reasonings of our own people; for
the faith of some, either too simple or too scrupulous, demands direct
authority from Scripture for giving up the shows, and holds out that
the matter is a doubtful one, because such abstinence is not clearly
and in words imposed upon God’s servants. Well, we never find it
expressed with the same precision, “Thou shalt not enter circus
or theatre, thou shalt not look on combat or show;” as it is
plainly laid down, “Thou shalt not kill; thou shalt not worship
an idol; thou shalt not commit adultery or fraud.”352
But we find that that first word of David
bears on this very sort of thing: “Blessed,” he says,
“is the man who has not gone into the assembly of the
impious, nor stood in
the way of sinners, nor sat in the seat of scorners.”353
| 353 Ps. i. 1. [Kaye’s censure of this use of
the text, (p. 366) seems to me gratuitous.] | Though he seems to have predicted beforehand
of that just man, that he took no part in the meetings and
deliberations of the Jews, taking counsel about the slaying of our
Lord, yet divine Scripture has ever far-reaching applications: after
the immediate sense has been exhausted, in all directions it fortifies
the practice of the religious life, so that here also you have an
utterance which is not far from a plain interdicting of the shows. If
he called those few Jews an assembly of the wicked, how much more will
he so designate so vast a gathering of heathens! Are the heathens less
impious, less sinners, less enemies of Christ, than the Jews were then?
And see, too, how other things agree. For at the shows they also stand
in the way. For they call the spaces between the seats going round the
amphitheatre, and the passages which separate the people running down,
ways. The place in the curve where the matrons sit is called a chair.
Therefore, on the contrary, it holds, unblessed is he who has entered
any council of wicked men, and has stood in any way of sinners, and has
sat in any chair of scorners. We may understand a thing as spoken
generally, even when it requires a certain special interpretation to be
given to it. For some things spoken with a special reference contain in
them general truth. When God admonishes the Israelites of their duty,
or sharply reproves them, He has surely a reference to all men; when He
threatens destruction to Egypt and Ethiopia, He surely pre-condemns
every sinning nation, whatever. If, reasoning from species to
genus, every nation that sins against them is an Egypt and
Ethiopia; so also, reasoning from genus to species, with reference to
the origin of shows, every show is an assembly of the
wicked.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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