On Idolatry 14

But many have now persuaded themselves that it is pardonable if at times they do what the heathen do, lest the name be blasphemed. But the blasphemy we must avoid in every way is, I think, this: if one of us leads a heathen to just blasphemy by fraud, or injury, or insult, or other grounds for a worthy complaint, in which the name is deservedly attacked, so that the Lord too is deservedly angry. Otherwise, if it was said of every kind of blasphemy, “Because of you my name is blasphemed,” we all perish, since the whole circus, with its wicked votes, assails the name through no fault of ours. Let us give up being Christians, and it will not be blasphemed! No: let it be blasphemed, while we are keeping discipline and not departing from it, while we are approved and not rejected. O blasphemy akin to martyrdom, which bears witness that I am a Christian at the very moment it detests me for being one! The cursing of a discipline faithfully kept is a blessing on the name. “If I wished to please men,” he says, “I should not be the servant of Christ.” But the same apostle elsewhere bids us take care to please all: “Just as I,” he says, “please all in all things.” Was it, no doubt, by celebrating the Saturnalia and the Kalends of January that he pleased men? Or by modesty and patience? By gravity, by kindness, by integrity? Likewise when he says, “I have become all things to all men, that I might win all,” was he an idolater to idolaters? A heathen to heathens? Worldly to the worldly? And although he does not forbid us to associate with idolaters and adulterers and other criminals, saying, “Otherwise you would have to go out of the world,” he certainly does not slacken the reins of association so far that, since we must live and mix with sinners, we may also sin with them. Where there is the intercourse of life, which the apostle allows, there … sinning, which no one permits. It is lawful to live with the heathen; it is not lawful to die with them. Let us live with all; let us rejoice together in the fellowship of nature, not of superstition. We are equals in soul, not in discipline; joint owners of the world, not of error. But if we have no right of fellowship in such things with outsiders, how much more wicked is it to celebrate them among brethren! Who can endure or defend this? The Holy Spirit reproaches the Jews for their festival days: “Your sabbaths,” he says, “and new moons and ceremonies my soul hates.” By us, to whom the sabbaths are foreign, and the new moons, and the feasts once loved by God, the Saturnalia and the New Year's and Midwinter festivals and the Matronalia are frequented; gifts come and go, and New Year's presents; games resound, banquets clamor. O the better faithfulness of the nations to their own sect, which claims for itself no solemnity of the Christians! Neither the Lord's day nor Pentecost, even if they knew of them, would they have shared with us; for they would fear to seem Christians. We are not afraid of being declared heathen! If some indulgence must be granted to the flesh, you have, I will not say as many days of your own, but more. For to the heathen each festival day comes once a year; to you, every eighth day. Pick out each of the solemnities of the nations and set them out in order: they will not be able to fill up a Pentecost.