Tertullian · a new plain-English translation from the original language
[1] But why should I say anything of sacrifices and priesthoods? Of spectacles and the pleasures belonging to them we have already composed an entire book. Here it is fitting to take up again the question of festival days and other extraordinary observances, which we sometimes indulge out of frivolity, sometimes out of timidity, against the faith and its discipline, sharing them with the nations in matters that belong to idols. [2] Let me first settle the point: whether one who serves God ought to join the nations themselves in celebrations of this sort, whether in dress, in diet, or in any other form of their rejoicing. To rejoice with those who rejoice and mourn with those who mourn was said by the apostle of brothers, in an exhortation to unity of spirit. [3] But beyond that, light has no partnership with darkness, nor life with death — or else we tear up what stands written: the world will rejoice, but you will mourn. If we rejoice with the world, we must fear that we will also mourn with the world. [4] Let us mourn, then, while the world rejoices, and we shall rejoice later when the world mourns. So too Lazarus, refreshed after death in the lap of Abraham, and the rich man, set opposite him in torment by fire, balance out the alternating fortunes of the wicked and the good by a fitting requital. There are certain days of gift-giving which some mark down to the credit of honor, others to a debt of payment. [5] Now then, you say, I shall collect what is mine, or pay back what I owe another. If men have consecrated this custom to themselves out of superstition, why do you, a stranger to the whole of their vanity, take part in these idol-feast solemnities, as though the calendar were binding on you too, so that you may not settle what you owe another, or receive what another owes you, except on the observance of that particular day? [6] State the terms on which you wish to be dealt with. Why hide at all, when by leaving another in ignorance you stain your own conscience? If it is known that you are a Christian, you are put to the test, and you act against another's conscience by seeming not to be a Christian; but if you conceal it, then, once tested, you stand self-condemned. Either way, you are guilty of putting God to shame. For whoever is ashamed of me before men, he says, I too will be ashamed of him before my Father who is in heaven.
XIV.