The early christians, according to Tertullian, Menucius Felix, Cyprian, Lactantius, and others, believed, that the “motives for going to these amusements were not of the purest sort.  People went to them without any view of the improvement of their minds.  The motive was either to see or to be seen.”

They considered the manner of the drama as objectionable.  They believed “that he who was the author of truth, could never approve of that which was false, and that he, who condemned hypocrisy, could never approve of him, who personated the character of others; and that those therefore, who pretended to be in love, or to be angry, or to grieve, when none of those passions existed in their minds, were guilty of a kind of adultery in the eyes of the Supreme Being.”

They considered their contents to be noxious.  They “looked upon them as consistories of immorality.  They affirmed that things were spoken there which it did not become christians to hear, and that things were shewn there, which it did not become christians to see; and that, while these things polluted those from whom they come, they polluted those in time, in whose sight and hearing they were shewn or spoken.”

They believed also, “that these things not only polluted the spectators, but that the representations of certain characters upon the stage pointed out to them the various roads to vice, and inclined them to become the persons, whom they had seen represented, or to be actors in reality of what they had seen feigned upon the stage.”

They believed again, “that dramatic exhibitions produced a frame of mind contrary to that, which should exist in a christian’s breast; that there was nothing to be seen upon the stage, that could lead or encourage him to devotion; but, on the other hand, that the noise and fury of the play-house, and the representations there, produced a state of excitement, that disturbed the internal man.  Whereas the spirit of a christian ought to be calm, and quiet, and composed, to fit it for the duties of religion.”

They believed also, “that such promiscuous assemblages of men and women were not favourable to virtue; for that the sparks of the passions were there blown into a flame.”

Tertullian, from whom some of the above opinions are taken, gives an invitation to those who were fond of public spectacles, in nearly the following terms.

Are you fond, says he, of the scenic doctrine, or of theatrical sights and compositions?  We have plenty of books for you to read.  We can give you works in prose and in verse.  We can give you apothegms and hymns.  We cannot to besure, give you fictitious plots or fables, but we can give you truths.  We cannot give you strophies, or the winding dances of the chorus, but we can give you simplicities, or plain and straightforward paths.  Are you fond of seeing contests or trials for victory?  You shall see these also, and such as are not trivial, but important.  You may see, in our christian example, chastity overcoming immodesty.  You may see faithfulness giving a death-wound to perfidy.  You may see mercy getting the better of cruelty.  You may see modesty and delicacy of sentiment overcoming impurity and impudence.  These are the contests in which it becomes us christians to be concerned, and where we ought to endeavour to receive the prize.