for righteous purposes was admissible when
the results to be secured by it were of vital importance. All the
refinements of casuistry have their value to those who admit that a
lie may be right under certain conceivable circumstances; but to those
who, like Augustine and Aquinas, insist that a lie is a sin _per se_,
and therefore never admissible, casuistry itself has no interest as a
means of showing when a sin is not sinful.[1]

[Footnote 1: Hence the casuistry of the Schoolmen and of the Jesuits,
and the question of Mental Reservations, and of "Probabilities," are
not treated in detail here.]

Some of the zealous defenders of the principles and methods of
the Jesuits affirm that, in their advocacy of dissimulation and
prevarication in the interests of a good cause, the Jesuits do not
intend to justify lying, but are pointing out methods of proper
concealment which are not within the realm of the lie. In this
(waiving the question whether these defenders are right or not as to
the fact) they seem even more desirous of being counted against lying
than those teachers, in the Romish Church or among Protestants, who
boldly affirm that a lie itself is sometimes justifiable. Thus it is
_claimed_ by a Roman Catholic writer, in defense of the Jesuits, that
Liguori, their favorite theologian, taught "that to speak falsely
is immutably a sin against God. It may be permitted under no
circumstances, not even to save life. Pope Innocent III. says, 'Not
even to defend our life is it lawful to speak falsely;'" therefore,
when Liguori approves any actions that seem opposed to truthfulness,
"he allows the instances because they are not falsehood."[1] On the
other hand, Jeremy Taylor squarely asserts: "It is lawful to tell
a lie to children or to madmen, because they, having no powers of
judging, have no right to the truth."[2]

[Footnote 1: See Meyrick's _Moral Theology of the Church of Rome_,
Appendix, p. 256 f.]

[Footnote 2: Jeremy Taylor's _Ductor Dubitantium_, in his Works, X.,
103.]

But Jeremy Taylor's trouble is in his indefinite definition of "a
lie," and in his consequent confusion of mind and of statement with
reference to the limitations of the duty of veracity. He writes on
this subject at considerable length,[1] and in alternation declares
himself plainly first on one side, and then on the other, of the main
question, without even an attempt at logical consistency. He starts
out with the idea that "we are to endea