Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

WHEN CHRIST APPEARED.21full of everything vile and criminal, is actually apart of the civil, cohering with it as limb with limbin the same body. 18Conceive, then, every revolting detail of adultery,prostitution, incest, or of dishonesty, or ofviolence, which the perverted invention of modernwriters has ever dressed up for the theatres of greatcities in this and other countries. They will perhapsyield in turpitude to that which the theatresof the Roman empire exhibited. But what thesetheatres represented in mimic action was theexact image, n 7 as reflected in a mirror, 7 of what wastransacted at the solemn service of the gods in unnumberedtemples.19 The exact image so far as itwent, yet stopping short in some respects, for oureye-witness above cited declares that gratitudewas due to the actors, inasmuch as they spared theeyes of men, and did not lay bare upon the theatreall that was hidden within the w^alls of temples. Itwas not enough, then, that all the many games andspectacles in which such things were representedwere dedicated to the gods, acted under their especialsanction, even enjoined by them as meansof gaming their favour or averting their wrath,which alone would have made them answerable for"the immorality so portrayed; not enough, even,18 De Civ. Dei, I. vi. 5, 6, 7.19 " Illam theatricam et fal ,111noverunt, et ei de carminibus poetarum tanquarn de spet ideo ista exposita, quam damnare non audent, illamliberius arguunt." De Civ. Dei, vi. 9; id. vi. 7.