Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
There are also several other kinds of trades that, even though they have no hand in the actual making of idols, are nevertheless implicated in the same crime, since without them idols could do nothing. It makes no difference whether you build or you decorate — if you erect its temple, its altar, its little shrine; if you beat out the gold leaf, or the insignia, or even build the house itself. Work of this sort is in fact the greater offense, since it confers not the mere likeness but the authority. But if the necessity of making a living is stretched this far, there are other trades too that can supply the means of living without straying outside discipline — that is, without fabricating an idol. The plasterer knows how to patch a roof, apply stucco, line a cistern, mold cornices, and work many other decorations into walls besides images. So too the painter, the marble-worker, the bronze-worker, and every kind of engraver
has fields of his own — and considerably easier ones at that. For the man who can sketch a statue, how much more easily can he plaster a sideboard? The man who can carve a Mars out of lime-wood, how much quicker can he knock together a cupboard? There is no craft that is not either the mother or the near relation of another. Nothing stands idle from something else. There are as many branches of the crafts as there are human desires. But there is a difference in the fees and the wages of the hand — and just as much a difference in the labor. A smaller fee is made up for by more frequent work. How many walls need statues? How many temples and shrines are built for idols? But how many houses, and law-courts, and baths, and tenement blocks are there? A slipper or a sandal is gilded every day; Mercury and Serapis are not. Let that be enough to make a living by the crafts. Luxury and ambition are far more constant customers than any superstition. Ambition will want platters and cups far more readily than superstition will. Garlands, too, are dispensed more by extravagance than by religious observance. When, then, we urge these kinds of trades — ones that neither touch the idol itself nor serve what belongs to the idol —
yet since these same things are often common to men and to idols alike, we must also be on guard against this: that anyone, with our knowledge, should demand something from our hands for the service of idols. And if we grant it, and do not act by the remedies already in use, I do not think we are free of the contagion of idolatry — since our hands, and we not ignorant of it, are caught at work, or in honor, or in the service of demons.
IX.