That is, in order that a man's empty safety may not pass away somewhat sooner, we should take the name of the Lord our God in vain. And there are among them learned men who even fix rules and set bounds for when one ought and when one ought not to perjure oneself. O where are you, fountains of tears? And what shall we do? Whither shall we go? Where shall we hide from the wrath of the Truth, if we not only neglect to guard against lies, but dare over and above to teach perjuries? Let the assertors and defenders of lying look to it, what kind or kinds of lying it delights them to justify: at least in the worship of God let them concede that one must not lie; at least let them refrain from perjuries and blasphemies;
at least where the name of God is invoked, where God is called to witness, where God's sacrament is interposed, where discourse concerning divine religion is uttered or woven together, let no one lie, no one commend a lie, no one teach or enjoin it, no one call a lie just; concerning the other kinds of lies let him choose for himself whatever kind of lying he thinks mildest and most harmless, if it pleases him that one may lie. This I know: that even he who teaches that one ought to lie wishes to seem to teach the truth. For if what he teaches is false, who would wish to devote himself to a false doctrine, where both the teacher deceives and the learner is deceived?
But if, in order to be able to find some disciple, he asserts that he teaches the truth when he teaches that one ought to lie — how shall that lie be from the truth, while the apostle John cries out against it: 'Every lie is not of the truth'? It is therefore not true that one ought sometimes to lie; and what is not true is to be urged upon no one at all. But weakness plays its part and proclaims that it has a winnable case with the favouring crowds, when it objects and says: How, among men who — beyond doubt, if they are deceived, are turned away from ruin either of others or of their own — how are men in peril to be succoured, if our human affection does not incline us to lie?
If the throng of mortality, the throng of weakness, will hear me patiently, I will answer something on behalf of the cause of Truth. Surely holy, true, sacred chastity is nothing if not from Truth; and whosoever acts against it assuredly acts against Truth. Why then — even if those in peril cannot otherwise be succoured — do I not commit fornication, which is contrary to Truth precisely because it is contrary to chastity, and yet, in order that those in peril may be succoured, do I speak a lie, which is most plainly contrary to Truth itself? What has chastity so deserved of us, and Truth so offended us? — seeing that all chastity is from Truth, and that Truth is a chastity not of the body but of the mind, and that even bodily chastity dwells in the mind.
Finally, what I said a little before and say again: whoever contradicts me for the sake of persuading and defending any lie — what does he say, if he does not say the truth? But if he is to be heard for this reason, that he says the truth, how does he wish to make me a liar by speaking the truth? How does a lie employ Truth as its patron? Or does it conquer its adversary only to be conquered by that very adversary? Who could endure such absurdity? By no means, therefore, may we say that those who assert that one ought sometimes to lie are, in so asserting, truthful — lest (which is the most absurd and foolish thing to believe) Truth should teach us to be liars.
For what sort of thing is it, that no one should learn from chastity that one ought to commit adultery, no one learn from piety that one ought to offend God, no one learn from kindness that one ought to harm anyone — and yet that we should learn from Truth that one ought to lie? Further, if Truth does not teach this, it is not true; if it is not true, it is not to be learned; if it is not to be learned, then one is never to lie. 'But solid food is for the perfect,' someone says. For many things are relaxed by indulgence to weakness which by no means please the most sincere Truth. Let anyone say this who does not fear the consequences that are to be feared, if any lies whatsoever should in any way be permitted. In no way, however, are they to be permitted to mount so high as to arrive at perjuries and blasphemies;
nor ought any cause whatsoever to be advanced why one ought to perjure oneself or — what is more execrable — why God ought to be blasphemed. For it is not the case that, because He is blasphemed by means of a lie, He is therefore not blasphemed. Indeed, in this manner it might be said that one does not perjure oneself, because one perjures oneself by means of a lie. For who could be a perjurer by means of the truth? So too by means of the truth no one can be a blasphemer. To be sure, he swears falsely more mildly who does not know it to be false and thinks that what he swears is true — just as Saul also blasphemed more excusably, because he did it ignorantly. But it is worse to blaspheme than to perjure oneself, because in perjuring oneself God is called as witness to a false thing, whereas in blaspheming false things are said about God Himself.
And so each man is the more inexcusable, whether as perjurer or as blasphemer, the more he knows or believes to be false those things which he asserts by perjuring or blaspheming. Whoever therefore says that one ought to lie for the temporal safety or life of a man in peril, wanders himself all too far from the road of eternal salvation and life, if he says that in such a cause one ought even to swear by God or even to blaspheme God. But sometimes the peril even of that very eternal salvation is set against us, which — it is cried — must, if it cannot otherwise be, be warded off by our lie:
as, for instance, if someone about to be baptized should be placed in the power of impious and unbelieving men, so that he cannot be reached to be washed in the laver of regeneration, except by the guards being deceived through a lie. From this most odious outcry, by which we are compelled to lie — not for anyone's wealth or honours passing away in this world, not for this present life itself, but for the eternal salvation of a man — whither shall I flee, save to Thee, O Truth? And to me chastity too is set forth by Thee. For why, if these guards, in order that they may admit us to baptize a man, can be enticed by fornication, do we not do what is contrary to chastity; and if they can be deceived by a lie, do we do what is contrary to Truth?
For beyond doubt chastity would be faithfully lovable to no one, if Truth did not enjoin it. Accordingly, in order that one may reach a man to be baptized, let the guards be deceived by lying, if Truth commands this. But how can Truth command that a man be baptized by means of lying, if chastity does not command that a man be baptized by means of committing adultery? And why does chastity not command this, except because Truth does not teach it? If therefore we ought not to do anything except what Truth teaches, since Truth teaches us not to do, even for the sake of a man to be baptized, that which is contrary to chastity — how will it teach us to do, for the sake of a man to be baptized, that which is contrary to Truth itself?
But just as eyes too weak to gaze upon the sun nevertheless gladly gaze upon those things which are illumined by the sun, so souls now strong enough to delight in the beauty of chastity cannot yet forthwith contemplate through itself the Truth from which chastity shines; so that, when it comes to doing something contrary to Truth, they shrink back and shudder at it in the very way they shrink back and shudder if something be proposed to be done which is contrary to chastity. But that son, who, receiving the Word, will be far from perdition, and from whose mouth nothing false proceeds, deems it just as closed off to himself if he be compelled to cross over to succour a man through a lie as through fornication.
And the Father hears him as he prays, that he may be able without a lie to succour him whom the Father Himself — whose judgments are inscrutable — wills to be succoured. Such a son, therefore, keeps himself from a lie just as from a sin. For sometimes indeed the name of lie is put for the name of sin. Whence is that saying: 'Every man is a liar.' For it was said as though it were said: 'Every man is a sinner.' And that other: 'But if the truth of God hath abounded in my lie.' And on this account, when he lies as man, he sins as man, and he will be held by that sentence in which it was said: 'Every man is a liar,' and: 'If we say that we have no sin, we deceive ourselves, and the truth is not in us.' But when nothing false proceeds from his mouth, it will be so according to that grace of which it was said:
'He that is born of God sinneth not.' For if this birth alone were in us, no one would sin; and when it alone shall be, no one will sin. But now we still drag along that which we were born corruptible, although, according to that which we have been reborn, if we walk well, we are renewed inwardly from day to day. But when this corruptible shall have put on incorruption, life will swallow up the whole, and no sting of death will remain; and the sting of death is sin. Either, therefore, lies are rightly to be guarded against by acting well, or to be confessed by repenting; but they are not, when they abound through living unhappily, to be increased even by teaching them.
But let him who thinks so choose whence he may succour a man in peril, to whatever kind of safety, by lies of whatever sort — provided that even among such men we may obtain this, that no cause ought to lead us to perjury and blasphemy. Let us judge these crimes at least to be either greater than fornications, or certainly not less. For it must very often be considered that men, of whose adultery their wives are suspected, provoke them to swear an oath — which assuredly they would not do, did they not believe that even those women who have not feared to commit adultery could yet fear perjury; because indeed some unchaste women, who have not feared to deceive their husbands by unlawful intercourse, have feared to call God falsely as witness against those very husbands whom they had deceived.
What reason then is there that a chaste and religious man should be unwilling to succour a man to be baptized by adultery, yet willing to do so by perjury — a thing which even adulterers are wont to dread? Further, if it is impious to do this by perjuring oneself, how much more by blaspheming! Far be it, therefore, that a Christian should deny and blaspheme Christ, in order to be able to make another man a Christian, and by perishing should seek to find one whom, if he teaches him such things, he would destroy once found.
So then you ought to refute and demolish the book which is entitled Libra in such a way that you first recognize that that head must be cut off, wherein they dogmatize that for the sake of concealing religion one ought to lie; so that you may show that those testimonies, by which they endeavour to enlist the holy books as patrons for their lies, are partly not lies, and partly, even those which are lies, are not to be imitated; and, if weakness so far claims for itself that something which Truth disapproves be permitted it pardonably, that nevertheless you may hold and defend unshaken that in divine religion one must absolutely never lie;
and that those in hiding are — just as neither adulterers by adulteries, nor murderers by murders, nor evildoers by evildoings, so neither liars by lies nor blasphemers by blasphemies — not to be sought out, according to those things which we have argued so much in this volume, that we have scarcely come to that end which we have fixed for it in this place.