Chapter VI.

Demanding then a law of God, you have that common one prevailing all over the world, engraven on the natural tables to which the apostle too is wont to appeal, as when in respect of the woman’s veil he says, “Does not even Nature teach you?”19    1 Cor. xi. 14.—as when to the Romans, affirming that the heathen do by nature those things which the law requires,20    Rom. ii. 14. he suggests both natural law and a law-revealing nature. Yes, and also in the first chapter of the epistle he authenticates nature, when he asserts that males and females changed among themselves the natural use of the creature into that which is unnatural,21    Rom. i. 26. by way of penal retribution for their error.  We first of all indeed know God Himself by the teaching of Nature, calling Him God of gods, taking for granted that He is good, and invoking Him as Judge. Is it a question with you whether for the enjoyment of His creatures, Nature should be our guide, that we may not be carried away in the direction in which the rival of God has corrupted, along with man himself, the entire creation which had been made over to our race for certain uses, whence the apostle says that it too unwillingly became subject to vanity, completely bereft of its original character, first by vain, then by base, unrighteous, and ungodly uses? It is thus, accordingly, in the pleasures of the shows, that the creature is dishonoured by those who by nature indeed perceive that all the materials of which shows are got up belong to God, but lack the knowledge to perceive as well that they have all been changed by the devil. But with this topic we have, for the sake of our own play-lovers, sufficiently dealt, and that, too, in a work in Greek.22    [Plays were regarded as pomps renounced in Baptism.]

6. Quaeres igitur Dei legem ? Habes communem istam in publico mundi, in naturalibus tabulis ad quas et apostolus solet prouocare, ut cum in uelamine feminae : « Nec natura, inquit, uos docet ? », ut cum ad Romanos, natura facere dicens nationes ea quae sunt legis, et legem naturalem suggerit et naturam legalem. Sed et in priore epistula naturalem usum conditionis in non naturalem masculos et feminas inter se demutasse affirmans ex retributione erroris in uicem poenae, utique naturalibus patrocinatur. Ipsum Deum secundum naturam prius nouimus, scilicet deum appellantes deorum, et bonum praesumentes et iudicem inuocantes. Quaeris an conditioni eius fruendae natura nobis debeat praeire ? Ne illa ui rapiamur qua Dei aemulus uniuersam conditionem, certis usibus homini mancipatam, cum ipso homine corrupit : unde eam et apostolus inuitam ait uanitati succidisse, uanis primum usibus, tum turpibus et iniustis et impiis subuersam. Sic itaque et circa uoluptates spectaculorum infamata conditio est ab eis qui natura quidem omnia Dei sentiunt, ex quibus spectacula instruuntur, scientia autem deficiunt illud quoque intellegere, omnia esse a diabolo mutata. Sed et huic materiae propter suauiludios nostros Graeco quoque stilo satis fecimus.