Chapter VIII.—Other Arts Made Subservient to Idolatry. Lawful Means of Gaining a Livelihood Abundant.

There are also other species of very many arts which, although they extend not to the making of idols, yet, with the same criminality, furnish the adjuncts without which idols have no power. For it matters not whether you erect or equip: if you have embellished his temple, altar, or niche; if you have pressed out gold-leaf, or have wrought his insignia, or even his house:  work of that kind, which confers not shape, but authority, is more important. If the necessity of maintenance39    See chaps. v. and xii. is urged so much, the arts have other species withal to afford means of livelihood, without outstepping the path of discipline, that is, without the confiction of an idol. The plasterer knows both how to mend roofs, and lay on stuccoes, and polish a cistern, and trace ogives, and draw in relief on party-walls many other ornaments beside likenesses. The painter, too, the marble mason, the bronze-worker, and every graver whatever, knows expansions40    See chap. ii., “The expansiveness of idolatry.” of his own art, of course much easier of execution. For how much more easily does he who delineates a statue overlay a sideboard!41    Abacum. The word has various meanings; but this, perhaps, is its most general use: as, for instance, in Horace and Juvenal. How much sooner does he who carves a Mars out of a lime-tree, fasten together a chest!  No art but is either mother or kinswoman of some neighbour42    Alterius = ἑτέρον which in the New Testament is = to “neighbour” in Rom. xiii. 8, etc. [Our author must have borne in mind Cicero’s beautiful words—“Etenim omnes artes quæ ad humanitatem pertinent habent quoddam commune vinculum,” etc. Pro Archia, i. tom. x. p. 10. Ed. Paris, 1817.] art: nothing is independent of its neighbour. The veins of the arts are many as are the concupiscences of men.  “But there is difference in wages and the rewards of handicraft;” therefore there is difference, too, in the labour required. Smaller wages are compensated by more frequent earning. How many are the party-walls which require statues? How many the temples and shrines which are built for idols? But houses, and official residences, and baths, and tenements, how many are they?  Shoe- and slipper-gilding is daily work; not so the gilding of Mercury and Serapis. Let that suffice for the gain43    Quæstum. Another reading is “questum,” which would require us to translate “plaint.” of handicrafts. Luxury and ostentation have more votaries than all superstition.  Ostentation will require dishes and cups more easily than superstition. Luxury deals in wreaths, also, more than ceremony. When, therefore, we urge men generally to such kinds of handicrafts as do not come in contact with an idol indeed and with the things which are appropriate to an idol; since, moreover, the things which are common to idols are often common to men too; of this also we ought to beware that nothing be, with our knowledge, demanded by any person from our idols’ service.  For if we shall have made that concession, and shall not have had recourse to the remedies so often used, I think we are not free of the contagion of idolatry, we whose (not unwitting) hands44    “Quorum manus non ignorantium,” i.e., “the hands of whom not unwitting;” which may be rendered as above, because in English, as in the Latin, in adjective “unwitting” belongs to the “whose,” not to the “hands.” are found busied in the tendence, or in the honour and service, of demons.

CAPUT VIII.

Sunt et aliae complurium artium species, quae etsi non contingunt idolorum fabricationem, tamen ea sine quibus idola nil possunt, eodem crimine 0670A expediunt . Nec enim differt, an extruas vel exornes, si templum, si aram, si aediculam ejus instruxeris, si bracteam expresseris , aut insignia, aut etiam domum fabricaveris. Major est ejusmodi opera, quae non effigiem confert, sed auctoritatem. Si ita necessitas exhibitionis extenditur , habent et alias species, quae sine exorbitatione disciplinae, id est, sine idoli confectura opem victus praestent. Scit albarius tector et tecta sarcire, et tectoria inducere, et cisternam liare , et cymatia distendere , et multa alia ornamenta praeter simulacra parietibus incrustare . Scit et pictor, et marmorarius, et aerarius, et quicumque caelator, latitudines suas utique multo faciliores. Nam qui signum describit, quanto facilius abacum linit? Qui de tilia Martem exsculpit, 0670B quanto citius armarium compingit? Nulla ars non alterius artis, aut mater, aut propinqua est. Nihil alterius vacat . Tot sunt artium venae, quot hominum concupiscentiae. Sed de mercedibus et manuspretiis interest. Proinde interest et de labore. Minor merces frequentiore actu repensatur. Quot parietes signa desiderant? Quot templa et aedes idolis aedificantur? Domus vero, et praetoria et balnea et insulae quantae? Soccus et baxa quotidie deaurantur, Mercurius et Serapis non quotidie. Sufficiat ad quaestum artificiorum, 0671A frequentior est omni superstitione luxuria et ambitio. Lances et scyphos facilius ambitio, quam superstitio desiderabit. Coronas quoque magis luxuria, quam solemnitas erogat. Cum igitur ad haec artificiorum genera cohortemur, quae idolum quidem, et quae idolo competunt, non attingant, sint autem et hominibus communia saepe quae et idolis, hoc quoque cavere debemus, ne quid, scientibus nobis, ab aliquibus de manibus nostris in rem idolorum postuletur. Quod si concesserimus, et non remediis jam usitatis egerimus, non puto nos a contagio idololatriae vacare, quorum manus non ignorantium in officio vel in honore et usu daemoniorum deprehenduntur.