nal
life is lost, never for any man's temporal life must a lie be told.
And as to those who take it ill, and are indignant that one should
refuse to tell a lie, and thereby slay his own soul in order that
another may grow old in the flesh, what if by our committing adultery
a person might be delivered from death: are we therefore to steal, to
commit whoredom.... To ask whether a man ought to tell a lie for the
safety of another, is just the same as asking whether for another's
safety a man ought to commit iniquity."

"Good men," he says, "should never tell lies." "To tell a lie is never
lawful, therefore neither to conceal [when concealment is desirable]
by telling a lie." Referring to the fact that some seek to find a
justification in the Bible teachings for lying in a good cause,--"even
in the midst of the very words of the divine testimonies seeking place
for a lie,"--he insists, after a full examination of this claim, "that
those [cited] testimonies of Scripture have none other meaning than
that we must never at all tell a lie."

"A lie is not allowable, even to save another from injury." "Every lie
must be called a sin." "Nor are we to suppose that there is any lie
that is not a sin, because it is sometimes possible, by telling a
lie, to do service to another." "It cannot be denied that they have
attained a very high standard of goodness who never lie except to
save a man from injury; but in the case of men who have reached this
standard, it is not the deceit, but their good intention, that is
justly praised, and sometimes even rewarded,"--as in the case of Rahab
in the Bible story. "There is no lie that is not contrary to truth.
For as light and darkness, piety and impiety, justice and injustice,
sin and righteousness, health and sickness, life and death, so are
truth and a lie contrary the one to the other. Whence by how much we
love the former, by so much ought we to hate the latter."

"It does indeed make very much difference for what cause, with what
end, with what intention, a thing be done: but those things which are
clearly sins, are upon no plea of a good cause, with no seeming good
end, no alleged good intention, to be done. Those works, namely,
of men, which are not in themselves sins, are now good, now evil,
according as their causes are good or evil.... When, however, the
works in themselves are evil,... who is there that will say, that upon
good causes, they may be done, so as either to be no sins,