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| The Same Rule Holds with Regard to Colours. God's Creatures Generally Not to Be Used, Except for the Purposes to Which He Has Appointed Them.
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Chapter VIII.—The Same Rule Holds with Regard to
Colours. God’s Creatures Generally Not to Be Used, Except
for the Purposes to Which He Has Appointed Them.
Similarly, too, do even the servants122
of those barbarians cause the glory to fade
from the colours of our garments (by wearing the like); nay, even their
party-walls use slightingly, to supply the place of painting, the
Tyrian and the violet-coloured and the grand royal hangings, which you
laboriously undo and metamorphose. Purple with them is more
paltry than red ochre; (and justly,) for what legitimate honour can
garments derive from adulteration with illegitimate colours? That
which He Himself has not produced is not pleasing to God, unless He was
unable to order sheep to be born with purple and sky-blue
fleeces! If He was able, then plainly He was
unwilling: what God willed not, of course ought not to be
fashioned. Those things, then, are not the best by nature
which are not from God, the Author of nature. Thus they
are understood to be from the devil, from the corrupter
of nature: for there is no other whose they can be, if they are
not God’s; because what are not God’s must necessarily be
His rival’s.123
| 123 Comp. de
Pæn., c. v. med. | But, beside the
devil and his angels, other rival of God there is none. Again, if
the material substances are of God, it does not immediately
follow that such ways of enjoying them among men (are so
too). It is matter for inquiry not only whence come
conchs,124
but what sphere of embellishment is assigned
them, and where it is that they exhibit their beauty. For all
those profane pleasures of worldly125
shows—as
we have already published a volume of their own about them126
—(ay, and) even idolatry itself, derive
their material causes from the creatures127
of
God. Yet a Christian ought not to attach himself128
| 128
“Affici”—a rare use rather of “afficere,”
but found in Cic. | to the frenzies of the racecourse, or the
atrocities of the arena, or the turpitudes of the stage, simply because
God has given to man the horse, and the panther, and the power of
speech: just as a Christian cannot commit idolatry with impunity
either, because the incense, and the wine, and the fire which
feeds129
| 129 Or perhaps “is
fed” thereby; for the word is “vescitur.” | (thereon), and the animals which are made the
victims, are God’s workmanship;130
| 130
“Conditio”—a rare use again. | since even the
material thing which is adored is God’s (creature). Thus
then, too, with regard to their active use, does the origin of
the material substances, which descends from God, excuse (that
use) as foreign to God, as guilty forsooth of worldly131
glory!E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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