7. It is not sufficient for lust to make use of its present means of mischief, unless by the exhibition it makes its own that in which a former age had also gone wrong. It is not lawful, I say, for faithful Christians to be present; it is not lawful, I say, at all, even for those whom for the delight of their ears Greece sends everywhere to all who are instructed in her vain arts.11    [Compare Clement, vol. ii. p. 248, note 5, and p. 249, notes 2, 11.] One imitates the hoarse warlike clangours of the trumpet; another with his breath blowing into a pipe regulates its mournful sounds; another with dances, and with the musical voice of a man, strives with his breath, which by an effort he had drawn from his bowels into the upper parts of his body, to play upon the stops of pipes; now letting forth the sound, and now closing it up inside, and forcing it into the air by certain openings of the stops; now breaking the sound in measure, he endeavours to speak with his fingers, ungrateful to the Artificer who gave him a tongue. Why should I speak of comic and useless efforts?  Why of those great tragic vocal ravings? Why of strings set vibrating with noise? These things, even if they were not dedicated to idols,12    [This touches a point important to the modern question.  It is said, “Oh! but these Fathers denounced only those heathen spectacles of which idolatry was part,” etc. The reply is sufficiently made by our author.] ought not to be approached and gazed upon by faithful Christians; because, even if they were not criminal, they are characterized by a worthlessness which is extreme, and which is little suited to believers.

VII. Non est libidini satis malis suis uti praesentibus, nisi suum de spectaculo faciat in quo etiam superior aetas erraverat. Non licet , inquam, adesse Christianis fidelibus, non licet omnino, nec illis quos 0785B ad delinimenta aurium ad omnes ubique Graecia instructos suis vanis artibus mittit. Clangores tubae bellicos alter imitatur raucos, alter lugubres sonos spiritu tibiam inflante moderatur, alter, cum choris et cum hominis canora voce contendens spiritu suo, quem de visceribus suis in superiora corporis nitens hauserat, tibiarum foraminibus modulatur; nunc effuso, et nunc intus occluso atque in aerem pro certis foraminum meatibus emisso, nunc in articulo sonum frangens, loqui digitis elaborat, ingratus artifici qui linguam dedit. Quid loquar comicas et inutiles curas? quid illas magnas tragicae vocis insanias? quid nervos cum clamore commissos? Haec etiamsi non essent simulacris dicata, adeunda tamen et spectanda non essent Christianis fidelibus; quoniam, etsi 0785C non haberent crimen, habent in se maximam et parum congruentem fidelibus vanitatem.