Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] I think we have now sufficiently filled out the list of how many ways, and in what fashion, the spectacles commit idolatry — from their origins, from their titles, from their trappings, from their locations, from their arts — so that we may be certain that none of this, on any count, suits us who have twice renounced idols. [2] It is not that a carved image amounts to anything real, as the Apostle teaches; rather, what happens in these performances is done in service of demons, who of course settle into the consecrated images of idols, be they of the dead or, as people imagine, of the gods. [3] For this reason, then, since both kinds of idols belong to a single condition — the dead and the gods being one and the same thing — we abstain from both forms of idolatry. [4] We spurn temples no less than tombs; we own no altar, bow before no likeness, offer no sacrifice, perform no rite for the dead. Nor, moreover, do we eat of the sacrifice or of the funeral feast, because we cannot eat the table of God and the table of demons. [5] If, then, we keep our gullet and stomach untouched by such pollutions, how much more do we guard our nobler parts — the ears and the eyes — from the delights served up to idols and to the departed, delights that are not worked upon in the bowels, but sink instead into the very soul and spirit, whose purity matters to God far beyond that of the bowels.