Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
How vain, then—no, how desperate is the argument of those who, ducking and weaving to keep their pet pleasure, plead that no abstinence from the shows is spelled out anywhere in Scripture, specifically and by name, forbidding a servant of God to be present at such gatherings. Recently I heard a fresh defense of this sweet vice. The sun, they say—indeed God himself—looks down from heaven and is not defiled. True: the sun even sends its rays into a sewer and is not fouled. But would that God looked upon none of the crimes of men, that we might all escape judgment! He watches robberies too, and lies and adulteries and frauds and idolatries and the shows themselves. Shall we then decline to watch, precisely so as not to be seen by him who watches everything? You are comparing, my friend, the accused to the judge: the accused, who is guilty because he is seen; the judge, who is judge because he sees. Do we then run wild outside the boundary lines of the circus, aim our lust outside the hinges of the theater, our insolence outside the stadium, our cruelty outside the amphitheater, simply because God's eyes reach beyond the awnings and the tiers and the gangways too? We are mistaken: nowhere and never is what God condemns excused; nowhere and never is what is always and everywhere forbidden made lawful. This is the integrity of truth, and the full measure of discipline owed to it, and the evenness of holy fear, and the fidelity of obedience—not to shift one's verdict, not to vary one's judgment. What is truly good or truly bad cannot become something else. Everything stands fixed within the truth of God.