Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
In how many more ways must we plead our case before it is finished—that nothing counted among the shows is pleasing to God, nor fitting for a servant of God, that is not also pleasing to God himself? If we have shown that everything about them was founded on account of the devil and is furnished out of the devil's own stock—for nothing that is not God's, or that displeases God, belongs to anyone but the devil—then this is the devil's pageant, against which we swore renunciation in the seal of our faith. What we have renounced, we owe no participation in, whether by deed, word, sight, or even a glance. Or do we not renounce and tear up our own seal by tearing up our testimony to it? Is there anything left, then, but to demand the answer from the pagans themselves? Let them announce it to us: whether it is permitted for Christians to make use of the show. Why, it is from this very point, more than any other, that they recognize a man has become a Christian—by his repudiation of the shows! So a man plainly denies his faith who removes the very mark by which he is known as a believer. And what hope is left for a man like that? No one crosses over into the enemy's camp except by throwing down his own weapons, abandoning the standards and the oath sworn to his own commander, and agreeing, at the same moment, to perish with the other side.