On Idolatry 2

But let all the names of the other crimes depart to the particular nature of their own works, and let idolatry remain in what it is itself. A name so hostile to God is sufficient in itself, a substance of crime so rich, putting forth so many branches, spreading through so many veins, that it is chiefly on this account that the subject has been taken up: in how many ways we must guard against the wide reach of idolatry, since in many ways it overthrows the servants of God, not only when it goes unrecognized but also when it is disguised. Most people think that idolatry is to be understood simply in these ways alone: if someone burns incense, or sacrifices, or offers a sacrificial feast, or is bound to some sacred rites or priesthoods; just as if someone thought that adultery was to be reckoned only in kisses and embraces and the actual joining of flesh, or that murder was to be counted only in the shedding of blood and the taking of life. But we are certain how much more widely the Lord extends these things, since he marks adultery even in lust, if someone has fixed his eye lustfully and stirred his soul unchastely, and since he judges murder even in a word of cursing or abuse, in every impulse of anger, and in neglect of love toward a brother; as John teaches that whoever hates his brother is a murderer. Otherwise the devil's ingenuity in malice, and God's lordship in the discipline by which he fortifies us against the devil's wide reach, would amount to little, if we were judged only for those offenses which even the nations have decreed are to be punished. How will our righteousness abound beyond that of the scribes and Pharisees, as the Lord prescribed, unless we have perceived the abundance of its opposite, that is, unrighteousness? And if the head of unrighteousness is idolatry, the first thing is to be fortified against the abundance of idolatry, by recognizing it not only in its manifest forms.