Treatises on Various Subjects

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TO CONSENTIUS AGAINST LYING Chapter 1 nOU HAVE SENT ME much to read,t dear brother2 Con. sentius, you have sent me much to read. While I have been preparing my reply and have been distracted by many other more urgent tasks, a year has passed by and has reduced me to such straits that I must reply somehow or other so as not further to detain-now that the sailing season is favorable3-the courier eager to return. So, all that God's servant Leonas brought me from you I opened and read through and weighed with as much consideration as possible as soon as I received it and again later when I made ready to dictate4 this reply. I am quite delighted with your eloquence, with your memory of sacred Scripture, with your adroitness of mind, with your distress in stinging indif. ferent Catholics, with your zeal in raging against even latent I Cf. Introduction. 2 Early Christians would commonly address each other as 'brother.' 3 This must be the spring of 420. Cf. M. Schanz, Geschichte der romischen Literatur (Munich, 1920) IV 2.442. 4 An allusion to St. Augus.tine's customary method of writing. 125 126 SAINT AUGUSTINE heretics. But I am not persuaded that they should be drawn out of hiding by our lies. For, why do we try with so much care to track them and hunt them down? Is it not so that, when they have been caught and brought into the open, we may either teach them the truth themselves or else, by con· victing them of error, keep them from harming others? Is it not, in short, so that their falsehood may be blotted out or guarded against and God's truth be increased? Therefore, how can I suitably proceed against lies by lying? Or should robbery be proceeded against by means of robbery, sacrilege by sacrilege, and adultery by adultery? 'But if through my lie the truth of God has abounded,' are we, too, going to say, 'why should we not do evil that good may come from it?'6 You see how much the Apostle detests this. But what is it to say: 'Let us lie in order to bring lying heretics to the truth,' if not the same as saying, 'Why should we not do evil that good may come from it?' Or is lying sometimes a good, or sometimes not an evil? Why, then, has it been written: 'Thou hatest all the workers of iniquity: thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie'?6 He has not made exception of some or said indefinitely: 'Thou wilt destroy tellers of lies,' so as to allow that certain ones be understood, but not everyone. But he has brought forth a universal proposition, saying: 'Thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie.' Or, because it has not been said: 'Thou wilt destroy all that speak any lie or that speak any lie whatsoever,' are we to think, therefore, that room has been made for a certain kind of lie and that God will not destroy those who tell a certain kind of lie, but only those who tell unjust lies, not any lie whatsoever, because there are found just lies, too, which ought actually to be mat. ter for praise rather than reproach? 5 Rom. 3.7.8. 6 Ps. 5.7. AGAINST LYING 127 Chapter 2 (2) Do you not see how much this argument supports the very ones whom we are trying to catch as great quarry by our lies? That, as you yourself have shown, is precisely the opinion of the Priscillianists. To establish this opinion they produce evidence from Scripture, urging their followers to lie as if in accordance with the example of the Patriarchs, Prophets, Apostles, and angels, not hesitating to add even Christ our Lord Himself, thinking that they cannot other. wise prove their falsehood to be true except by saying that the Truth is mendacious.1 They must be refuted, not imitated. We must not participate with the Priscillianists in that evil in which they are proved to be worse than all other heretics, for they alone, or at least they especially, in order to hide what they think is their truth, are found to give dogmatic sanction to lying.2 And this great evil they deem just, for they say that what is true must be kept in the...