vor to be like God, who is
truth essentially;" that "God speaks truth because it is his nature;"
that "the Holy Scriptures of the Old and New Testament do indefinitely
and severely forbid lying," and "our blessed Saviour condemns it by
declaring every lie to be of the Devil;" and that "beyond these things
nothing can [could] be said for the condemnation of lying." All that
certainly is explicit and sound,--as sound as Basil the Great, as
St. Augustine, or as Thomas Aquinas!

[Footnote 1: Jeremy Taylor's _Ductor Dubitantium_, in his Works, X.,
100-132.]

When he attempts the definition of a lie, however, Jeremy Taylor would
seem to claim that injustice toward others and an evil motive are of
its very essence, and that, if these be lacking, a lie is not a lie.
"Lying is to be understood to be something said or written to the hurt
of a neighbor, which cannot be understood [by the hearer or reader]
otherwise than to differ from the mind of him that speaks." As
Melanchthon says, "To lie is to deceive our neighbor to his hurt." "If
a lie be unjust, it can never become lawful; but if it can be separate
from injustice, then it may be innocent."

Jeremy Taylor naturally falls back on the Bible stories of the Hebrew
midwives and Rahab the harlot, and assumes that God commended their
lying, as lying, because they had a good end in view; and he asserts
that "it is necessary sometimes by a lie to advantage charity by
losing of a truth to save a life," and that "to tell a lie for
charity, to save a man's life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of
a prince, of an useful and a public person, hath not only been done in
all times, but commended by great and wise and good men." From this it
would appear that lying, which Jeremy Taylor sets out with denouncing
as contrary to God's nature, and as declared by our Saviour to be
always of the Devil, may, under certain circumstances, be a godly sin.
Gregory of Nyssa and young Chrysostom could not have done better than
this in showing the sinlessness of a sin in a good cause.

Seeing that concealment of that which is true is often a duty, and
seeing also that concealment of that which ought to be disclosed
is often practically a lie, Jeremy Taylor apparently; jumps to the
conclusion that concealment and equivocation and lying are practically
the same thing, and that therefore lying is sometimes a duty, while
again it is a sin. He holds that the right to be spoken to in
truthfulness, "thou