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it were true. His heart is double, not single, he does not bring out what he has there. The double heart has long since been reproved, "Deceitful lips... dissemble in their double heart. Ps. xii. 2. What is deceit? When one thing is pretended and another done. Deceitful lips are when the heart is not single.'-Serm. 133, vol. v. p. 739.

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In his books De Mendacio and Contra Mendacium, S. Augustine enumerates eight sorts of lying. Every one he rejects uncompromisingly. He denies that we may at any time be guilty of moral falsehood under whatever temptation we may be. The sin of the tongue in violating veracity is as great, he says, as the sin of the hand in theft or in murder, or, at least, we are no more justified in committing the former than the latter. He discusses all the examples of apparent falsehood in the Old and New Testaments, to which those who had a theory of lying appealed in his days as they do now, and concludes that for the examples which are brought forward out of the Holy Scriptures, either they are not falsehoods, but are supposed to be such by not being understood; or, if they are falsehoods, they are not proposed as objects of imitation.' He does not shrink from meeting difficult cases. He puts the very same case which we have before had with respect to S. Francis of Assisi. The bright thought of pointing down his sleeve had not, however, then arisen, and not even S. Augustine's sagacity could suggest it. Leaving that ingenious device to be recommended by saints of a more modern date, he solves the question in this fashion. Suppose that a man flies to a spot for refuge, and you see where he conceals himself; you are questioned about him: are you to lie? Your answer should be, I will not betray, and I will not lie.' But the question may be put in such a form that mere silence, or saying that you would not tell, might betray him, and you could avert his danger by a falsehood. Your answer should be, I know where he is, but I will never show the place;' for if you refuse to answer whether or no he is in a certain place, you will rouse certain suspicion with respect to that place; but by prefacing your answer by a confession of your knowledge of his whereabouts, you may turn away the attention of the inquirer from any particular spot, and make him press you to discover the object of his search; and if for your fidelity and humanity you have to endure suffering, your conduct will be not only free from blame but praiseworthy. This is the substance of his solution of the difficulty.'

Now we can perfectly conceive the possibility of a case arising in which the two virtues of veracity and charity might so clash as to make it, at least, pardonable to deflect somewhat

1 De Mendacio, cap. 13.

from the rigid observance of the former. S. Augustine does not admit such a possibility. You must not destroy your own soul,' he replies, for any supposed good of your neighbour, spiritual or temporal.' And yet it is to S. Augustine that Liguori refers in justification of his Equivocation and non-pure Mental Reservation, which, according to S. Augustine's definition, are merely forms of expressing a Lie.

In the same spirit S. Augustine is quoted in the Breviary as addressing the Blessed Virgin with the title of The only Hope of Sinners,' although the Sermon in which such words occur is known by every one of moderate attainments to be spurious, and is excluded from S. Augustine's works by the Benedictine editors. The value of truth, for truth's sake, is a thing apparently unappreciated and inappreciable by the Romish theological mind, in so far as it is Romish or distinct from Catholic. In one passage in this very treatise S. Augustine seems to have had before his eyes, by a prescient anticipation, the race of Salamanca doctors, Bonacinas, Escobars, and Liguoris. And there are among them learned men,' he cries, 'who actually lay down rules and fix limits when a man ought, and when he ought not, to commit perjury! O fountains of tears, where are ye? Where shall we go? Where shall we hide 'ourselves from the wrath of Truth, if we not only do not guard against lies, but dare over and above to teach perjury?' And here is a warning which may not be amiss at present in England.

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'This, again, is a most miserable thing: even those who are just become our converts don't know how to believe us; for, on their suspecting that we are lying to them about the Catholic dogmas too, so as to be concealing something or other which we think true, you would be sure to say, "I acted in that way, then, in order to catch you;" but what will you answer when the other says, "And how am I to tell that you are not doing the same now in order not to be caught by me?" Will any one be persuaded that a man who will lie in order to catch another, will not lie in order not to be caught himself? See you not the tendency of this pestilential thing? It tends to make every one a justifiable object of supicion to every one else, us to them, they to us, brother to brother. And so while the Faith is taught by falsehood, the result is rather that we have no faith in any one.'-Cont. Mend. cap. 4.

In short, we are reduced to that pleasant state of war and fencing on the plea of which Rome defends her Equivocation and non-pure Mental Reservation.

Thus we see that there is some difference between the Theory of Truthfulness held by Modern Rome and that held by the Ancient Church. We must now compare the teaching of England's Moral Theologians on the same point. Bishop Sanderson, whose works we are glad to learn are about to be reissued from the

University Press, has left behind him Lectures delivered in Oxford on the Obligation of Conscience, and on the Obligation of Oaths. We will make a few extracts from the latter of these works, in order to show the difference in principle between the teaching of a manly straightforward English mind, nurtured in the University of Oxford, in the bosom of England's Church, and that of a warped, however devout, Italian conscience, such as Liguori's, whom Rome has honoured with her beatification and canonization.

'An oath,' says Bishop Sanderson, is a religious act in 'which God is called to witness for the confirmation of some ' matter in doubt.' The main division of oaths is into assertory and promissory; the first having respect to what is present or past, the second to what is future. We take our extracts from an old translation of the year 1655, which professes to have been made by the special command of the late King Charles I. and revised by the royal hand.

'Whosoever sweareth, obligeth himself ipso facto, to manifest truth in that which he is about to say, whether it be in a matter past or present, by an assertory, or, in a future matter, by a promissory oath. And hitherto this obligation is alike common to both kinds, so that if in either of them the words of the party swearing do not agree with his mind, he becometh guilty of the breach of his duty, and thence also, by a necessary consequence, obnoxious unto punishment. But in the promissory oath, besides this obligation, which falls upon the conscience of the party swearing, and is common to it and the assertory quatenus juramentum, there is another further obligation proper and peculiar to it, quatenus promissorium, which falls upon the matter of the oath; by virtue whereof the promissory party swearing is bound not only in present to intend to do that which he sweareth, that his words may agree with his mind, but also to endeavour, for the future, as much as in him lieth, to fulfil that which he hath sworn, that his deeds may agree with his words; that is, he obligeth himself not only barely to promise that which he really intendeth, but also further obligeth himself to perform all that which he hath promised by oath.'-P. 30.

Again:

'Whosoever bindeth himself to the performance of anything by so sacred a bond, is wholly bound by the religion of his oath, both in his mind seriously to intend, and as far as lieth in his power willingly to endeavour that he may faithfully perform whatsoever he hath promised, without fraud, double-dealing, or simulation. . . . As to the guilt of perjury, especially at the bar of conscience, it matters not much which way an oath be broken, openly or covertly, that being a symptom of a profane, this, of a deceitful heart; both which, except fraud be worthy of a greater hatred, are equally abominable unto the most holy God, who loveth the single in heart and truth in the inward man. . . . Men rest secure, absolving themselves from all guilt and fear of perjury, and think they have excellently well provided for themselves and their consciences, if, during the act of swearing, they can make any shift to defend themselves, either, as the Jesuits do, with some equivocation or mental reservation, or by forcing upon the words some subtle and unnatural interpretation; or if, after they have sworn, they can find some loophole or artificial evasion, whereby such art may be used with the oath that,

the words remaining, the sense may be eluded with some sophism, and the strength utterly lost. The ancient Christians did not acknowledge this kind of theology, nor the sounder heathens this moral philosophy. Far otherwise Augustine said, "They are perjured who, preserving the words, deceive the expectation of those to whom they have sworn."--Pp. 37, 40.

Further:

Be it so, that a form of speech appears not by the words themselves, nor by the common estimation of men to be an oath; nevertheless, if a man using such a form, either through mistake think himself to have sworn or through some deceitful intention would be thought to have sworn, that form, though it be not really and in itself an oath, will have nevertheless, as to that man, the full obligations of an oath to all effects; and if he violate his faith so given, he is guilty at the bar of conscience, not only of falsehood, but of perjury.... Deceitfulness in the will doth not excuse from obligations, because it is most just that an impious and fraudulent man should fall into the pit which he digged for his neighbour, and that his feet should be caught in the snare which he set for another.'-P. 176.

These extracts will show the spirit of Bishop Sanderson's Treatise on Oaths.

We will now request our readers to recal to mind Liguori's doctrine of Amphibology. There are three kinds of equivocation, it will be remembered; equivocation by means of an ambiguous word-equivocation by means of a double-edged sentence-equivocation by means of such a phrase as I say, No. All these kinds of equivocation are justifiable and right when employed for a good reason, and all of them may be used with the sanction of an oath. Now let us compare the Bishop of the English Church with Rome's Bishop :

'The second case is of an oath when the words, according to their common signification, are clear enough, but the party swearing, having no will to bind himself in that sense, intendeth another, whereof the words by reason of some ambiguity are not altogether incapable, and industriously concealeth his meaning in such sort as that the auditors understand one thing, he another. This is that verbal equivocation which, amongst some other casuists and scholastics, the Jesuits especially maintain and practise.

As if a Jesuit apprehended should swear that he was a smith, meaning that his name was Smith, or an apprentice, commanded to tell where his master is, should swear that he died a month ago, meaning that he then dyed stockings.... The Jesuits so vigorously defend this equivocation, that J. Molanus, Professor at Louvain, justifieth the murder of John Huss, perpetrated against the public faith engaged unto him for his safe-conduct, for this reason, that the conduct undertook for his safe coming, not for the safety of his return. And now let Jesuits confidently complain of the great injuries done them, whilst we say that they hold faith not to be kept with heretics; for if this be to keep faith, they need not much trouble themselves, with whomsoever it is contracted, whether it ought to be kept or broken. Our result is, that the party swearing after this manner both sinneth in his equivocal oath, and is, notwithstanding that tacit equivocation, bound in conscience unto the performance of his promise in that sense which the words yield of themselves, and are, without constraint, apt to beget upon the minds of others. Unless he act accordingly, he is not guiltless of perjury.-P. 192.

That he may not appear only to make assertions, or to declaim, he adds his reasons:

First, an oath, as we have laid down, ought to be most simply and effectually understood, unto which simplicity this artifice of industrious ambiguity is repugnant. 2. It is a great profanation of the name of God to invoke Him, as witness and searcher of hearts, to attest the truth of words which agree not with the heart of the party swearing; for what were this, if not, as far as lieth in man's power, to make God, who can neither deceive nor be deceived, an impostor and patron of base dissimulation? 3. Equivocation is contrary to the very institution and nature of an oath, whose chief use is to be an end of strife and controversy, and to give as certain security in uncertain things as human nature is able to afford, it being expediendarum litium maximum remedium. But that certainty which we seek in an oath is lost in equivocation, for what certainty can there be in his answer whose meaning is uncertainty? Nor are controversies thus ended, but aggravated. 4. The party so swearing deludeth his neighbour and knowingly deceiveth, contrary to the precept, Ne jurat in dolo, and to the ancient form, Si sciens fallo.'-P. 195.

Rome's canonized Bishop teaches, as we have seen, that nonpure mental reservation is allowable in assertions and in oaths. Contrast England's Bishop:

The third case allied to this is that of Mental Reservation, which the Jesuits defend with the same reasons, and define with the same qualifications, as verbal equivocation. For as, in that, by wresting the words pronounced into another sense, so, in this, by some addition not pronounced but conceived in the mind, the party swearing eludeth the interrogatory. So they say a Priest, if he be examined by an heretical magistrate whether he be a Priest, may answer that he is no Priest, meaning, of Bacchus, or Apollo. And an adulterous wife, if she be questioned of adultery by her jealous husband, may swear unto him that she committed not adultery; meaning, not to the end to tell him. The like they hold in promissory oaths; that a traveller, to save his life, may swear to give money to a thief, though he never intend it, provided that when he sware, "I will give thee so much," he understood, if I owe it thee, or if thou demand it before the magistrate. But as this mental reservation is built on the same sand with verbal equivocation, so is it destroyed at the same dash; for it rooteth all faith and assurance out of men, makes God an impostor, is deceitful unto our neighbour, perverteth the use and end of oaths, setteth open a great gate to all kinds of lies and perjuries, and is so much worse than equivocation as more difficult to be prevented. For equivocation foreseen or suspected may be prevented by such diligent explication of the words as may leave no loophole of ambiguity. But no human art or providence, if men will be juggling, can prevent this reservation. Jesuits and Priests, reserving unto themselves the liberty to reserve anything, are not afraid, with a serious brow, to take our oath of allegiance, though penned with such accuracy of words as leaveth no hold for cavil nor way of escape. Yet that very clause where, in express words, they promise that they will faithfully observe all that has gone before according unto the tenour of the words pronounced by them, and according to the plain and natural sense and true intent of these words, without any equivocation or mental reservation whatsoever, they understand at the same time with this reservation-to wit, that I will tell you.'-P. 198.

The two methods of dealing with a promissory oath made to a robber, are characteristic of the two theologians. You need

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