Million Book Collection - The Fishers of Men Ministries

22 THE GODS OF THE NATIONSthat actions of this quality were in the theatresascribed to the gods who presided over them ; butthese acts of immorality were not the fictions ofpoets or the acting of players, but the very substanceof the theology itself in which the worshipof all these nations was embodied. Priapus appearedto make a laugh on the stage exactly inthe costume in which he was worshipped in thetemples, or in which he entered into the rites ofmarriage ; a costume of indescribable turpitude,the shame of our human nature. The players onthe stage and the statues in the temples equallyexhibited Jove bearded and Mercury beardless,Saturn in decrepitude and Apollo in youthfulbeauty. In the rites of Juno, of Ceres, of Venus,of the mother of the gods, words were uttered andscenes acted such as no decent person would sufferto be spoken or acted before his own mother ; orrather they contained, as a portion of themselves,the worst crimes which the theatres represented ;nay, crimes which they stopped short of acting,and persons so infamous that they were not toleratedeven on the stage, where yet to take partwas a civil dishonour. What, then, was the natureof those rites wherein those were chosen totake part whom the utmost license of the stagefrom its boards ?20 Let us conceivesuch a conception can be adequately represented20 " Quee sunt ergo ilia sacra quibus agendis tales elegit sanctitasquales nee thymelica in se admittit obscoenitas." De Civ. Dei, vi. 7.