The principal crime of the human race, the highest guilt of the age, the whole cause of judgment, is idolatry. For although each transgression retains its own character, although each is destined for judgment under its own name, yet it is settled under the charge of idolatry. Set aside the titles, examine the deeds. The idolater is likewise a murderer. Dost thou ask whom he has slain? If it makes anything for the ambition of a fine indictment, no stranger nor enemy, but his very self. By what snares? Those of his own error. With what weapon? The offence against God. With how many blows? With as many as there are idolatries. He who denies that the idolater has perished will deny that the idolater has committed murder. Likewise thou mayest recognize adultery and fornication in the same man;
For whoever serves false gods is without doubt an adulterer against the truth, since every falsehood is adultery. And so he is plunged into fornication as well. For who that works together with unclean spirits does not walk defiled and debauched? And indeed the Holy Scriptures use the very word 'fornication' in reproaching idolatry. The nature of fraud, I suppose, is this: if a man seize what belongs to another or deny another his due; and surely fraud committed against a man bears the name of a most serious crime. But idolatry does fraud against God, denying Him His own honours and conferring them upon others, so that it joins insult to fraud as well. But if fraud, as much as fornication and adultery, brings death, then in these too idolatry is no less unabsolved from the guilt of murder.
After such crimes, so deadly, so devouring of salvation, the rest likewise, each in its own way and separately disposed, present their own share of the condition within idolatry. In it there are also the lusts of the world; for what solemnity of idolatry is there without the pomp of adornment and finery? In it there is wantonness and drunkenness, since such things are for the most part frequented for the sake of feasting and belly and appetite. In it there is injustice; for what is more unjust than that which knows not the Father of justice? In it also there is vanity, since its whole rationale is vain. In it there is lying, since its whole substance is a lie. And so it comes to pass that all things are found in idolatry, and idolatry in all things.
But furthermore, since all sins savour of enmity against God, and since nothing that savours against God is not reckoned to the demons and unclean spirits to whom the idols are made over, without doubt whoever sins commits idolatry; for he does that which belongs to the vassals of idols. But let all the names of the several crimes retire into the peculiarities of their own works, and let idolatry remain in that which it is of itself. It suffices to itself, a name so hostile to God, a substance of crime so rich, which puts forth so many branches, spreads out so many veins, that from this above all our present matter has been undertaken — in how many ways the vast reach of idolatry must be guarded against by us; since in manifold ways it subverts the servants of God, not only when unrecognised but even when dissembled.
Most people think idolatry is to be understood only in these ways: if someone burns incense, or offers sacrifice, or presents a sacrificial feast, or binds himself to some sacred rites or priesthoods — just as if someone were to think adultery is to be reckoned only in kisses and embraces and in the very union of the flesh, or murder only in the shedding of blood and the taking away of life. But how much more widely the Lord disposes these matters, we are certain; since He designates adultery even in concupiscence, if a man has cast his eye lustfully and stirred his soul unchastely, and since He judges murder even in a word of cursing or reviling, and in every outburst of anger, and in the neglect of love toward a brother.
As John teaches that he is a murderer who hates his brother. Otherwise the devil's ingenuity in malice, and God's dominion in the discipline by which He fortifies us against the devil's vast reaches, would rest upon some trifling thing, if we were to be judged only in those sins which even the heathen nations have decreed must be avenged. How shall our righteousness abound above the scribes and Pharisees, as the Lord has prescribed, unless we discern the abundance of its adversary, that is, of unrighteousness? But if the head of unrighteousness is idolatry, our first task is to be fore-armed against the abundance of idolatry, while we recognise it not only in its manifest forms. For some time back the idol did not exist.
Before the craftsmen of this monster had boiled up, there were only temples and empty shrines, just as to this day in certain places the traces of antiquity remain. Nevertheless idolatry was being practised, not under this name, but in this work. For even today it can be carried on outside a temple and without an idol. But when the devil brought into the world the makers of statues and images and simulacra of every kind, that crude business of human calamity obtained both its name and its advancement from the idols. Thenceforth the head of idolatry has become every art that produces an idol in any way whatever.
For it makes no difference whether a modeller fashions it, or a carver engraves it, or an embroiderer weaves it; nor does it matter as to the material, whether the idol be formed of plaster, or colours, or stone, or bronze, or silver, or thread. For since idolatry can take place even without an idol, surely, when the idol is present, it makes no difference of what kind it is, of what material, of what shape — lest anyone should think that only that is to be held an idol which has been consecrated in human form. To this end an interpretation of the word is needful. Eidos in Greek means 'form'; from it, by a diminutive, eidolon is derived; and likewise among us 'form' (forma) has made 'little form' (formula). Therefore every form or little form demands to be called an idol. Hence idolatry is all attendance and service about every idol.
Hence too every maker of an idol is guilty of one and the same crime — unless the people committed too little idolatry, seeing that they consecrated to themselves the likeness of a calf and not of a man. God forbids the idol to be made as much as to be worshipped. Inasmuch as it precedes, that a thing be made which can be worshipped, so much the more prior is it that it should not be made, if it is not lawful to worship it. For this cause, namely to root out the very matter of idolatry, the divine law proclaims: You shall not make an idol; and, adding, nor the likeness of those things which are in heaven and which are in earth and which are in the sea, it has forbidden to God's servants throughout the whole world arts of this kind.
Enoch had gone before, foretelling that the demons and the spirits of the deserter angels would turn all the elements, all that the world contains in its census — whatever is contained in heaven, in sea, in earth — into idolatry, so that they might be consecrated in the place of God, against God. Therefore human error worships all things save only the Creator of all things Himself. The images of these things are idols; the consecration of the images is idolatry. Whatever idolatry commits must of necessity be reckoned to the craftsman of any and every idol. Finally, the same Enoch fore-condemns in his threatening both the worshippers and the fabricators of the idol together. And again: I swear to you, sinners, that against the day of the destruction of blood, sorrow is prepared.
You who serve stones, and who make images of gold and silver and wood and stone and clay, and who serve phantoms and demons and infernal spirits and all errors not according to knowledge — from these you shall find no help. And Isaiah indeed says: You are witnesses, whether there be a God besides Me. And there were none then who fashion and carve, all of them vain, who make what pleases themselves, things which shall not profit them. And thereupon follows that whole pronouncement which detests both the craftsmen and the worshippers; whose conclusion is: Know that their heart is ashes and earth, and no one can deliver his own soul. Where David likewise speaks of the makers: Let those become like them, he says, who make them.
And what should I, a man of feeble memory, further suggest? What should I recall from the Scriptures? As though either the voice of the Holy Spirit did not suffice, or as though it were still to be debated whether the Lord has cursed and condemned first the very craftsmen of those things whose worshippers He curses and condemns. Full plainly will I answer, and at greater length, the excuses of craftsmen of this sort — who ought never to be admitted into the house of God, if one knows that discipline. Now that cry so wont to be objected, 'I have no other way to live,' can be beaten back the more sharply: Live, then, must you? What have you to do with God, if you live by your own laws? Then, as to their daring even to argue from the Scriptures that the apostle said:
'As each one was found, so let him continue' — by this interpretation we could all, then, continue in our sins. For not one of us was found not a sinner, since Christ came down for no other cause than to set sinners free. Likewise they say that the same apostle enjoined, after his own example, that everyone should work with his own hands for a living. If this precept is to be defended by all hands, then, I suppose, bath-thieves too live by their own hands, and robbers themselves ply their living with their hands; forgers, moreover, work their evil writings surely not with their feet but with their hands; and actors indeed labour for their living not with hands alone but with their whole limbs.
Let the Church, then, lie open to all who support themselves by their hands and their own work — if there is no exception of those arts which God's discipline does not receive! But someone says, against the proposition of the forbidden likeness: Why then did Moses in the wilderness make a likeness of a serpent out of bronze? Apart from that, figures which were being pre-arranged as a foreshadowing of some hidden dispensation belong not to the abrogation of the law, but to the exemplars of their own cause. Otherwise, if we were to interpret these things as adversaries of the law do, should we not, like the Marcionites, ascribe inconstancy to the Almighty — whom they in this manner destroy as mutable, since in one place He forbids, in another commands?
But if anyone dissembles that that figure of the bronze serpent, suspended after the manner of a shape, designated the figure of the Lord's cross, which was to free us from the serpents — that is, from the angels of the devil — while through itself it hung up the devil, that is, the serpent, slain; or whatever other exposition of that figure has been revealed to worthier persons — provided only the apostle affirms that all things then befell the people figuratively. Well then, that the same God both forbade a likeness to be made by the law, and by an extraordinary command enjoined the likeness of the serpent! If you observe the same God, you have His law: You shall not make a likeness.
If you also regard the precept concerning the likeness made afterwards, then you too, imitate Moses: make no simulacrum against the law, unless God has commanded you also. If no law of God had forbidden idols to be made by us, if no voice of the Holy Spirit had uttered its threat against the fabricators of idols no less than against the worshippers, we should interpret from our very sacrament that arts of this sort are opposed to our faith. For how have we renounced the devil and his angels, if we make them? What repudiation did we utter to those, I do not say with whom, but of whom we live? What discord have we taken up against those to whom, for the grace of our profession, we are bound? Can you have denied with the tongue what you confess with the hand? Destroy with a word what you build up by a deed?
Do you preach one God, you who make so many? Do you preach the true God, you who make false ones? 'I make them,' says someone, 'but I do not worship them' — as though there were some cause for which he dared not to worship, other than that for which he ought not to make them, namely, on account of the offence given to God in either case. Nay, you do worship, you who make them so that they can be worshipped. And you worship not with the spirit of some cheap odour, but with your own; nor at the cost of a beast's life, but of your own soul. To them you sacrifice your talent; to them you pour out your sweat; to them you kindle your prudence. You are more to them than a priest, since through you they have a priest; your diligence is their divinity. Do you deny that you worship what you make? But they do not deny it — those to whom you slay this fatter and more gilded and greater victim, your own salvation, all the day long.
To this point the zeal of faith will plead, groaning: that a Christian should come from the idols into the Church, from the workshop of the adversary into the house of God; that he should lift up to God the Father hands that are the mothers of idols; that with these hands he should worship, which outside are worshipped against God; that he should apply to the body of the Lord those hands which confer bodies upon demons! Nor is this enough. It were a small thing if they received from other hands what they defile; but they themselves also hand over to others what they have defiled. Fabricators of idols are chosen into the ecclesiastical order. O the wickedness! Once the Jews laid hands on Christ; these men daily assault His body. O hands that ought to be cut off! Let them now consider whether it was said figuratively: If your hand offends you, cut it off.
What hands are more to be cut off than those in which the Lord's body is offended? There are also other kinds of very many arts which, even though they do not touch the fabrication of idols, nevertheless discharge with the same guilt those things without which idols can do nothing. For it makes no difference whether you build up or adorn, if you have constructed a temple, an altar, a little shrine for the idol; if you have wrought gold-leaf, or insignia, or even built a house for it. Greater is work of this kind, which confers not the figure but the authority. But if the necessity of self-support is thus urged, they have also other kinds of work which, without any deviation from the discipline — that is, without the fashioning of an idol — may furnish the resource of a living.
The plasterer knows both how to mend roofs and to lay on plaster-work, to line a cistern, to run out cornices, and to raise many other ornaments upon walls besides idols. The painter too knows this, and the marble-worker, and the bronze-smith, and every engraver knows the wide range of his own craft, and assuredly the far easier tasks. For he who traces out a statue, how much more easily does he coat a slab? He who carves a Mars out of linden-wood, how much more quickly does he put together a cabinet? No art is not either the mother or the near kinswoman of another art. Nothing is free of another. There are as many veins of the arts as there are lusts of men. But there is a difference as to wages and the prices of handiwork; and likewise a difference as to labour. A smaller wage is repaid by more frequent employment. How many walls call for statues?
How many temples and shrines are built for idols? But how many houses, and mansions, and baths, and blocks of tenements! Slippers and sandals are gilded every day; Mercury and Serapis not every day. Let that suffice for the gain of the crafts. Luxury and ambition are more frequent than any superstition. Ambition will require dishes and cups more readily than superstition; luxury too spends out garlands more than does religious solemnity. When therefore we exhort men to these kinds of crafts — which do not touch the idol itself, nor the things that belong to the idol, but which are often common both to men and to idols — we must also take heed of this: that nothing be demanded of us from our hands, with our knowledge, for the service of idols.
But if we grant this, and do not act by the remedies now in use, I do not think that we are free from the contagion of idolatry — we whose hands, not in ignorance, are caught in the service, or in the honour and use, of demons. Now, we observe that among the arts there are also certain professions liable to idolatry. Of astrologers there is no need even to speak. But since a certain one in these days has come forward defending for himself the continuance of that profession, I will use a few words. I do not allege that he honours idols, whose names he has inscribed upon the heavens, to whom he has assigned all the power of God, so that men on this account think God need not be sought, presuming that we are driven by the immutable decree of the stars.
One thing I put forward: that those angels are deserters of God, lovers of women, and betrayers of this curious lore as well, and on that account also condemned by God. O divine sentence, persisting even down to earth, to which even the ignorant bear witness! The astrologers are expelled, just as their angels were; the City and Italy are forbidden to astrologers, just as heaven was to their angels. There is the same penalty of exile for disciples and for masters. But the Magi — and astrologers — came from the East. We know the fellowship of magic and astrology with each other. The first interpreters of the stars, then, announced Christ's birth; the first they were to bring gifts. By this name, I suppose, they bound Christ to themselves. What then? Shall the religion of those Magi therefore now afford patronage even to astrologers?
The astrology of today, forsooth, is concerned with Christ; it observes and foretells the stars of Christ, not of Saturn and Mars and any other of that same order of the dead! But that knowledge was permitted only up to the Gospel, so that, once Christ was brought forth, no one thereafter should interpret anyone's nativity from heaven. For that frankincense too, and the myrrh and the gold, they then offered to the infant Lord as, so to speak, the closing act of sacrificial worship and of worldly glory, which Christ was about to abolish.
Therefore the dream which, without doubt from God's will, was suggested to those same Magi — that they should go into their own country, but by another way, not that by which they had come — that is, that they should not walk in their former sect; not that Herod might not persecute them (for he did not even persecute them, being ignorant even that they had departed by another way, since he was ignorant also of the way by which they had come) — so much so that we ought to understand 'way' as sect and discipline. And so the Magi were commanded thenceforth to walk otherwise. So too that other kind of magic which works by miracles, rivalling even against Moses by the patience of God, drew itself out even down to the Gospel.
For thereafter Simon Magus too — by then just now a believer, since he still thought somewhat in the manner of his mountebank sect, namely that among the miracles of his profession he might also traffic in the Holy Spirit by the laying on of hands — was cursed by the apostles and cast out from the faith. And another magician, who was with Sergius Paulus, since he likewise opposed the apostles, was punished with the loss of his sight. This too the astrologers would have reported, I believe, if any of them had fallen in with the apostles. Yet since magic is punished — of which astrology is a species — surely the species too is condemned within its genus. After the Gospel you will nowhere find either sophists or Chaldeans or enchanters or diviners or magi, save plainly punished. Where is the wise? where the scribe? where the disputer of this age?
Has not God made foolish the wisdom of this world? You know nothing, astrologer, if you did not know that you would become a Christian. But if you did know, you ought to have known this too: that you would have nothing to do with that profession. That very art would instruct you about its own peril — the art which foretells the crises of others' lives. You have no part nor lot in this reckoning. He cannot hope for the kingdom of the heavens whose finger or rod abuses heaven. Inquiry must be made also concerning schoolmasters, and indeed the other professors of letters. Nay, there is no doubt that they are near akin to idolatry in its manifold forms.
First, they are of necessity such as must preach the gods of the nations, must set forth their names, genealogies, fables, and all their honorific decorations; and then must observe the solemnities and festivals of those same gods, as being those upon which they reckon up their revenues. What schoolmaster will attend the Quinquatria without a tablet of the seven idols? He consecrates the very first offering of a new pupil to the honour and name of Minerva; so that, even though he be not verbally profaned to any one idol as partaking of idol-sacrifice, yet he is to be shunned as an idolater. What? Is there less of defilement? Nay, is the gain not the more excellent, being dedicated to an idol by names and honours? Just as much as the Minervalia are Minerva's, and the Saturnalia Saturn's — which even by the little slaves must be celebrated in the season of the Saturnalia.
The New Year's gifts also must be caught at, and the Septimontium, and the Bruma, and the honoraria of a dear kinship must all be exacted; the schools of Flora must be crowned; the priestesses and aediles offer sacrifice when installed; the school is honoured on holidays. The same is done on the birthday of an idol; every pomp of the devil is frequented. Who will think these things befit a Christian, unless he thinks they befit even one who is not a schoolmaster? We know it can be said: If it is not lawful for the servants of God to teach letters, neither will it be lawful to learn them; and how then would anyone be trained even to human prudence, or to any sense or action, seeing that literature is the instrument of all life? How do we repudiate secular studies, without which divine things cannot be attained?
Let us therefore look at the necessity of literary erudition; let us consider that it can in part be admitted, in part must be avoided. It is more fitting for the faithful to learn letters than to teach them; for the rationale of learning and of teaching is different. If a believer teaches letters, without doubt, while he teaches, he commends the praises of the idols interwoven therein; while he transmits them, he affirms them; while he mentions them, he bears witness. He seals the very gods with this name, whereas the law forbids, as we have said, that the gods be pronounced and that this name be placed in vain. Hence the first faith is built up for the devil from the very beginnings of erudition. Ask whether he who catechises about idols commits idolatry.
But when a believer learns these things, if he already understands what they are, he neither receives nor admits them — much more so if he has long understood. Or, when he begins to understand, he ought first to understand what he learned first, that is, concerning God and the faith. Accordingly he will spit out those things and not receive them, and will be as safe as one who, knowing it to be poison, receives it from an ignorant person yet does not drink it. To such a one the necessity is reckoned as an excuse, because he cannot learn otherwise. But it is so much the easier not to teach letters than not to learn them, inasmuch as the believing pupil will more easily not approach the other defilements of the schools — those arising from public and private solemnities — than the master will avoid frequenting them.
If we consider the rest of the offences by class — first of all covetousness, the root of all evils, ensnared by which some have suffered shipwreck concerning the faith — since covetousness has twice been called idolatry by the same apostle; and then lying, the minister of covetousness (I say nothing of perjury, since it is not even lawful to swear) — is trafficking fit for a servant of God? For the rest, if covetousness be removed, what cause is there for acquiring? When the cause of acquiring ceases, there will be no necessity of trading. But suppose there be now some honest gain, secure from the taint of covetousness and lying: still, I think, it offends into the crime of idolatry, that trade which pertains to the very soul and spirit of idols, which fattens every demon.
Is that not indeed the principal idolatry? Let them consider whether these same wares — incense, I mean, and the other foreign products — are used for the sacrifice of idols, and also by men for medicinal preparations, and moreover by us as well for the solaces of burial. Certainly, when the pomps, the priesthoods, the sacrifices of idols are equipped out of your perils, losses, inconveniences, deliberations, journeyings, and tradings, what else are you shown to be than a procurer for idols? Let no one contend that in this manner controversy may be raised against all forms of trade. The graver offences, each in proportion to the magnitude of their peril, extend the diligence of our observance, so that we withdraw not only from these things themselves, but also from those through which they are done.
For although it be done by others, it makes no difference if it be done through me. In nothing ought I to be necessary to another, when he does what is not lawful for me. From this — that I am forbidden to do it — I ought to understand that I must take care that it be not done through me. In short, in another case, of no lighter guilt, I observe this principle. For since it is forbidden me to fornicate, I furnish to others for that business no effort or complicity whatever. Since I have set apart my own flesh from the brothels, I recognise that I cannot ply either pandering or that kind of gain for another's sake. So too the prohibition of murder shows me that even the trainer of gladiators is barred from the Church: he will not, of himself, refrain from doing what he supplies to another to be done. Behold a still nearer precedent.
If a contractor for public victims should come to the faith, will you permit him to remain in that business? Or if, being already a believer, he has undertaken to carry it on, will you think he should be retained in the Church? Not, I think, unless one will also dissemble about the incense-seller. Forsooth, the procuring of blood falls to some, of odours to others! If, before idols existed in the world, idolatry, still shapeless, was transacted with these wares; if even now the work of idolatry is for the most part perpetrated without an idol, by the burnings of odours — does the incense-seller not do somewhat more service, and that toward the demons? For idolatry is more easily carried on without an idol than without the incense-seller's merchandise. Let us interrogate the conscience of faith itself.
With what face will a Christian incense-seller, if he passes through the temples, with what face will he spit upon and blow out the smoking altars for which he himself has provided? With what constancy will he exorcise his own foster-children, to whom he furnishes his own house as a store-room? For that man, even if he has cast out a demon, let him not be pleased with himself as touching the faith; for he has not cast out an enemy. He ought easily to have obtained it of one whom he feeds daily. There is, therefore, no art, no profession, no trade, which administers anything either to the equipping or forming of idols, that can be free of the title of idolatry — unless indeed we interpret idolatry as something altogether other than the service of worshipping idols. We flatter ourselves ill concerning the necessities of human self-support, if after our faith has been sealed we say:
'I have no way to live.' For here now I will answer more fully that abrupt proposition. It is said too late. For it ought to have been deliberated beforehand, after the likeness of that most provident builder who first reckons up the cost of the work against his own resources, lest, when he has begun, he should afterwards blush at his failure. But even now you have the sayings and examples of the Lord which take away from you every excuse. For what do you say? 'I shall be in want.' But the Lord calls the needy blessed. 'I shall have no food': but He says, Take no thought about food. And for clothing we have the example of the lilies. 'I had need of substance': but all things are to be sold and distributed to the needy. 'But provision must be made for children and posterity': no one who puts his hand to the plough and looks back is fit for the work.
'But I was bound by circumstance': No one can serve two masters. If you wish to be the Lord's disciple, it is necessary that you take up your cross and follow the Lord — that is, your straits and torments, or at least your own body, which is after the manner of a cross. Parents, spouses, children must be forsaken for God's sake. Do you hesitate about arts and tradings and professions, even for the sake of children and parents? Even then it was shown to us that both our pledges of affection and our crafts and our business must be forsaken for the Lord's sake, when James and John, called by the Lord, forsook both father and ship; when Matthew was raised up from the toll-booth; when even to bury one's father was too slow for faith. Not one of those whom the Lord chose said, 'I have no way to live.'