_Absit abusus, non desit totaliter usus._
I shall not run through Mr Collier's book; I will only touch a little on two or three general notions, in which, I think, he may be mistaken. What he urges out of the primitive councils and fathers of the Church seems to me to be directed against the heathen plays, which were a sort of religious worship with them, to the honour of Ceres, Flora, or some of their false deities. They had always a little altar on their stages, as appears plain enough from some places in Plautus. And Mr Collier himself, p. 235, tells us out of Livy that plays were brought in, upon the score of religion, to pacify the gods. No wonder, then, they forbid Christians to be present at them, for it was almost the same as to be present at their sacrifices. We must also observe that this was in the infancy of Christianity, when the Church was under severe and almost continual persecutions, and when all its true members were of most strict and exemplary lives, not knowing when they should be called to the stake, or thrown to wild beasts. They communicated daily, and expected death hourly; as their thoughts were intent upon the next world, they abstained almost wholly from all diversions and pleasures (though lawful and innocent) in this. Afterwards, when persecution ceased, and the Church flourished, Christians, being then freed from their former terrors, allowed themselves, at proper times, the lawful recreations of conversations, and among other, no doubt, this of shows and representations. After this time, the censures of the Church indeed might be continued or revived upon occasion against plays and players; though, in my opinion, it cannot be understood generally, but only against such players who were of vicious and licentious lives, and represented profane subjects, inconsistent with the morals and probity of manners requisite to Christians, and frequented chiefly by such loose and debauched people as were much more apt to corrupt than divert those who associated with them. I say, I cannot think the canons and censures of the fathers can be applied to all players, _quatenus_ players; for if so, how could plays be continued among the Christians, as they were, of divine subjects and scriptural stories? A late French author, speaking of the Hotel de Bourgogne, a play-house in Paris, says that the ancient dukes of that name gave it to the Brotherhood of the Passion, established in the church of Trinity Hospital, in the Rue St Denis, on condition that they should represent here interludes of devotion; and adds, that there have been public shows in this place six hundred years ago. The Spanish and Portuguese continue still to have, for the most part, such ecclesiastical stories for the subject of their plays; and if we may believe Gage, they are acted in their churches in Mexico and the Spanish West Indies.