On the Public Shows. 1
Argument. 2 --The Writer First of All Treats Against Those Who Endeavoured to Defend the Public Exhibitions of the Heathens by Scriptural Authority; And He Proves That, Although They are Never Prohibited by the Express Words of Scripture, Yet that They are Condemned in the Scriptural Prohibition of Idolatry, from the Fact that There is No Kind of Public Show Which is Not Consecrated to Idols. 3
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[See Ben Jonson, Volpone, Ep. Dedicatory.] ↩
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Obviously imitating Tertullian's treatise De Spectaculis. [See vol. iii. p. 79.] ↩
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He then prosecutes the subject, by going through the several kinds of public exhibitions, and sets forth, a little more diffusely than in the Epistle to Donatus, what risks are incurred by the spectators, and especially in respect of those exhibitions wherein, as he says, "representations of lust convey instruction in obscenity." Finally, he briefly enumerates such exhibitions as are worthy of the interest of a Christian man, and in which he ought rightfully to find pleasure. [For Epistle to Donatus, see p. 275, supra.] ↩
