Complete Works of Cyprian

let him speak; he will never carry out anything indecorous: for the
conscience which will owe itself to no other than to itself will have more
weight.

4 What has scripture forbidden? It has forbidden that to be watched which it
forbids to be done. All, I say, these types of spectacles it has condemned,
when it abolished idolatry, the mother of all games, from whence these
5 monsters of vanity and levity have come. For what spectacle is without an
idol, what game without a sacrifice, what contest not consecrated to a dead
man? What does a faithful Christian do among these things: if he flees
idolatry, what place is there for him? What, since he is already holy,
takes pleasure in criminal things? Why does he approve the superstitions
10 against God which he loves while he watches? Otherwise, let him know that
all these things are the inventions of demons, not of God. He is
shameless who exorcises demons in the church whose pleasures he praises in
the spectacles: and since once, renouncing that, every matter was severed in
baptism, while he goes after Christ to the spectacle of the devil, he
15 renounces Christ just as he renounces the devil. Idolatry, as I have already
said, is the mother of all games, which, so that faithful Christians may come
to it, blandishes them through the pleasure of the eyes and ears. Romulus
first consecrated the circus games to Consus, as if a god of counsel, for
the sake of kidnapping the Sabine women, and others [did so] for the rest.
When famine had occupied the city, scenic games were acquired for the
advocacy of the people...