On Idolatry
Tertullian
Chapter 5
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Chapter V.—Sundry Objections or Excuses Dealt with.
We will certainly take more pains in answering the excuses of artificers
Opening the library…
Opening the library…
On Idolatry
Tertullian
We will certainly take more pains in answering the excuses of artificers
i.e., the Discipline of the house of God, the Church. Oehler reads, “eam disciplinam,” and takes the meaning to be that no artificer of this class should be admitted into the Church, if he applies for admittance, with a knowledge of the law of God referred to in the former chapters, yet persisting in his unlawful craft. Fr. Junius would read, “ejus disciplinam.”
i.e., If laws of your own, and not the will and law of God, are the source and means of your life, you owe no thanks and no obedience to God, and therefore need not seek admittance into His house (Oehler).
1 Cor. vii. 20. In Eng. ver., “Let every man abide in the same calling wherein he was called.”
1 Thess. iv. 11; 2 Thess. iii. 6–12.
i.e., thieves who frequented the public baths, which were a favorite resort at Rome.
The Marcionites.
[The argument amounts to this, that symbols were not idols: yet even so, God only could ordain symbols that were innocent. The Nehushtan of King Hezekiah teaches us the “peril of Idolatry” (2 Kings xviii. 4) and that even a divine symbol may be destroyed justly if it be turned to a violation of the Second Commandment.]
[On which see Dr. Smith, Dict. of the Bible, ad vocem “Serpent.”]
i.e., the Jewish people, who are generally meant by the expression “the People” in the singular number in Scripture. We shall endeavour to mark that distinction by writing the word, as here, with a capital.
See 1 Cor. x. 6, 11.
On the principle that the exception proves the rule. As Oehler explains it: “By the fact of the extraordinary precept in that particular case, God gave an indication that likeness-making had before been forbidden and interdicted by Him.”
Ex. xx. 4, etc. [The absurd “brazen serpent” which I have seen in the Church of St. Ambrose, in Milan, is with brazen hardihood affirmed to be the identical serpent which Moses lifted up in the wilderness. But it lacks all symbolic character, as it is not set upon a pole nor in any way fitted to a cross. It greatly resembles a vane set upon a pivot.]
[Elucidation I.]