Against Lying 1–17

You have sent me much to read, dearest brother Consentius, you have sent me much to read. While I was preparing a reply to it, and was drawn away by one occupation after another more pressing, a year went by and pushed me into such straits that I had to reply in whatever way I could, so as not to detain any longer the bearer, who wished to return now that the sailing season was smiling. So, having unrolled and read through all that Leonas, the servant of God, brought me from you, both as soon as I received it and afterward, when I was ready to dictate this, and having weighed it with all the consideration I could, I was greatly delighted with your eloquence, your memory of the holy Scriptures, your skill of mind, the grief with which you sting careless catholics, and the zeal with which you gnash your teeth even against hidden heretics. But I am not persuaded that they should be dug out of their hiding places by our lies. For why do we try so carefully to track them and hunt them down, if not so that, once caught and brought out into the open, we may either teach them the truth too or at least, when they have been refuted by the truth, not allow them to harm others? For this purpose, then: that their lie may be destroyed or guarded against, and God's truth increased. How then can I rightly pursue lies by a lie? Are robberies also to be pursued by robbery, sacrileges by sacrilege, and adulteries by adultery? But if the truth of God will abound through my lie, are we too going to say, "Let us do evil that good may come"? You see how the apostle detests this. For what else is "Let us lie in order to bring lying heretics to the truth" but "Let us do evil that good may come"? Or is a lie sometimes good, or is a lie sometimes not evil? Why then is it written, "You hate, Lord, all who work iniquity; you will destroy all who speak a lie"? For he did not except some, nor did he speak indefinitely, "You will destroy those speaking a lie," so as to allow some, not all, to be understood, but he uttered a universal sentence, saying, "You will destroy all who speak a lie." Or, because it was not said, "You will destroy all who speak every lie" or "who speak any lie whatever," is it therefore to be thought that room has been left for some lie? So that, namely, there is some lie such that God does not destroy those who speak it, but destroys all those who speak an unjust lie, not any lie whatever, because a just lie is also found, which would certainly deserve praise, not blame?

Do you not see how much this argument helps the very people we are striving to catch with our lies as a great prize of the hunt? For this is the view of the Priscillianists, as you yourself have shown. To prove it they bring testimonies from the Scriptures, urging their followers to lie as if by the examples of patriarchs, prophets, apostles, and angels, not hesitating to add even the Lord Christ himself, and not thinking they can show their falsehood to be truthful except by saying that the Truth is a liar. These things are to be refuted, not imitated; and we must not be partners of the Priscillianists in that evil in which they are shown to be worse than other heretics. For they alone, or at least they above all, are found to make lying a doctrine for concealing what they think is the truth, and to consider so great an evil just on the ground that, they say, what is true must be kept in the heart, but to utter what is false with the mouth to outsiders is no sin; and that this is what is written, "who speaks truth in his heart," as if this were enough for righteousness even if one speaks a lie with the mouth, when not a neighbor but an outsider hears it. For this reason they even think that the apostle Paul, when he had said, "Putting away lying, speak the truth," at once added, "each with his neighbor, for we are members of one another," so that it would be permitted, and indeed right, to speak a lie with those who are not our neighbors in the fellowship of the truth and are not, so to speak, our fellow members.

This view dishonors the holy martyrs; rather, it takes away holy martyrdoms altogether. For according to these people they would have acted more justly and wisely if they had not confessed to their persecutors that they were Christians, nor made them murderers by their confession, but rather by lying and denying what they were had both kept safe the advantage of the flesh and the resolve of the heart, and not allowed the persecutors to carry out the crime they had conceived in their minds. For the persecutors were not their neighbors in the Christian faith, so that they ought to speak with them in their mouth the truth that they spoke in their heart; they were, moreover, enemies of the truth itself. For if Jehu, whom they seem to themselves to look to shrewdly, among others, as an example of lying, lied that he was a servant of Baal in order to kill Baal's servants, how much more justly, according to their perversity, would the servants of Christ, in time of persecution, lie that they were servants of demons, so that the servants of demons would not kill the servants of Christ; and sacrifice to idols so that men would not be killed, if he sacrificed to Baal in order to kill men? For what would it harm them, according to the excellent teaching of the liars, if they feigned the worship of the devil in the body while the worship of God was kept in the heart? But the true martyrs, the holy martyrs, did not understand the apostle so. For they saw and held fast what was said: "With the heart one believes unto righteousness, with the mouth confession is made unto salvation," and, "In their mouth no lie was found"; and so they departed blameless to where they will no longer have to beware of being tempted by liars, because in their heavenly assemblies they will have no more liars, whether outsiders or neighbors. They would not imitate that Jehu, seeking out the ungodly and sacrilegious to be killed by an ungodly lie and a sacrilegious sacrifice, not even if the same Scripture had been silent about what kind of man he was. But since it is written that he did not have an upright heart with God, what did it profit him that, for some obedience which he showed in wholly destroying the house of Ahab, out of desire for his own dominion, he received some transitory reward of a temporal kingdom? Rather, brother, I urge you to defend the truthful view of the martyrs, so that against liars you may be not a teacher of lying but a champion of truth. For, I beg you, attend carefully to what I say, so that you may find how much that is to be guarded against which, with a zeal praiseworthy indeed against the ungodly, so that they may be caught and corrected or avoided, is nevertheless thought, too incautiously, to be something to teach.

There are many kinds of lies, all of which, indeed, we ought to hate universally. For there is no lie that is not contrary to truth. For just as light and darkness, godliness and ungodliness, righteousness and iniquity, sin and right action, health and weakness, life and death, so truth and lying are contrary to each other. Hence the more we love the one, the more we ought to hate the other. Yet there are some lies which it does no harm to believe, although even in that kind of lying the will to deceive harms the liar, not the believer. For example, if that brother Fronto, the servant of God, were lying in some of the things he reported to you (God forbid), he would certainly have harmed himself, not you, even if you had believed everything he told, without any wrong on your part, because, whether those things happened so or not, they contain nothing such that if someone believed it happened so, even if it did not, he would be judged blameworthy by the rule of truth and the teaching of eternal salvation. But if someone lies about something such that whoever believes it will be a heretic against the teaching of Christ, the liar is the more guilty as the believer is the more wretched. See, then, what it amounts to if we lie against the teaching of Christ, in a way that whoever believes it will perish, in order to catch the enemies of that teaching and bring them to the truth while we ourselves depart from it; or rather, when we catch liars by lying, we teach worse lies. For what they say when they lie is one thing, what they say when they are deceived is another. When they teach their heresy, they say the things in which they are deceived; but when they say that they hold what they do not hold, or do not hold what they hold, they say the things in which they lie. Whoever believes them in this, even if he does not find them out, does not himself perish. For one who believes a heretic to be a catholic, when he lyingly professes catholic doctrines, does not depart from the catholic rule. And so it is not ruinous to him, because he is deceived about a man's mind, which is hidden and about which he cannot judge, not about the faith of God, which he ought to guard as implanted in him. But when they teach their heresy, whoever believes them, thinking it the truth, will share both their error and their condemnation. So it comes about that when they tell their abominable doctrines, in which they are deceived by a deadly error, whoever believes perishes; but when we preach catholic doctrines, in which we hold the right faith, then whoever had perished is found, if he believes. When, however, being Priscillianists, they lie that they are ours, so as not to betray their poisons, whoever of ours believes them remains a catholic himself even though they are hidden. We, on the contrary, if in order to track them down we lie that we are Priscillianists, since we will praise their doctrines as our own, whoever believes them will either be confirmed among them or be carried over to them immediately in the meantime. But what the coming hour may bring forth, whether those who were deceived when we lied are afterward freed from there when we tell the truth, and whether they will be willing to listen to one teaching whom they have found lying in this way, who can know for certain? Who is unaware that this is uncertain? From this it is gathered that it is more ruinous, or, to speak more mildly, more dangerous, for catholics to lie in order to catch heretics than for heretics to lie in order to hide from catholics; for whoever believes catholics who test him by lying is either made or confirmed a heretic, whereas whoever believes heretics who conceal themselves by lying does not cease to be a catholic. To make this plainer, let us put forward some things by way of example, chiefly from the writings that you sent me to read.

Look, let us set before our eyes a crafty spy approaching someone whom he has sensed to be a Priscillianist, and lyingly praising the life of Bishop Dictinius, if he knew him, or his reputation, if he did not. This is still more tolerable, because Dictinius is thought to have been a catholic and to have been corrected from that error. Then (for this follows in the art of lying) he will mention with veneration Priscillian, an ungodly and detestable man, condemned for his abominable wicked deeds and crimes. By this venerating mention, if the one for whom such nets are spread was perhaps not a firm Priscillianist, he will be made firm by this praise. And when the spy's talk has gone on to the rest, and he says that he pities those whom the author of darkness has wrapped in such darkness of errors that they do not recognize the honor of their soul and the glory of its divine lineage; and then extols with such praise the book of Dictinius called the Libra (the Pound), so named because it is set out in twelve questions, treated as if they were ounces, that he testifies that such a Pound, containing horrible blasphemies, is more precious than many thousands of pounds of gold: surely this cunning of the liar kills the soul of the one who believes, or, if it is already killed, sinks it and presses it down in the same death. "But," you will say, "afterward he will be set free." What if this does not happen, whether because some obstacle intervenes so that what was begun is not completed, or through the obstinacy of a heretical mind denying the same things again, even if it had already begun to confess some? Especially since, if he learns that he was tested by an outsider, he will for that very reason strive the more boldly to hide what he thinks by a lie, having learned far more surely, even from the example of his tempter himself, that this is done without blame. With what face, pray, shall we blame in a man, and dare to condemn, the fact that he thinks the truth is to be covered by lying, when we teach it?

It remains, then, that what the Priscillianists hold, according to the abominable falsehood of their heresy, about God, the soul, the body, and other things, we should not hesitate to condemn with truthful godliness; but what they hold, that one must lie so that the truth may be hidden, is to be a doctrine common to us and them (God forbid!). This is so great an evil that even if this effort of ours, by which we wish to catch them through a lie and change them, should prosper so that we catch and change them, no gains would make up for these losses, by which we too are corrupted along with them for the sake of their correction. For through this lie we too will be perverted in that respect, and they only half corrected, since this very thing, that they think one must lie for the truth, we do not correct in them, because we have learned and teach the same thing and prescribe that it should be done, so that we may be able to reach them to amend them. Yet we do not amend them, since we do not remove from them the fault by which they think the truth should be covered, but rather we are made faulty ourselves, when we seek them through such a fault and do not find them. How shall we be able to believe them when converted, to whom we lied when they were perverse? Lest perhaps, having been caught, they do what they suffered in order to be caught, not only because they are accustomed to do it, but because they find it also in us, to whom they come.

And what is more pitiable, even they, once made ours, as it were, cannot find how to believe us. For if they suspect that we speak even the catholic doctrines themselves lyingly, in order to hide something else that we think true, you will certainly say to one who suspects such things: "I did that then in order to catch you." But what will you answer him when he says, "How then do I know whether you are not doing it even now, so as not to be caught by me?" Or can anyone be persuaded that a man who lies in order to catch does not lie in order not to be caught? Do you see where this evil tends? Namely, that not only we to them and they to us, but every brother to every brother may, not without reason, seem suspect. And so, while through a lie the aim is that faith may be taught, what is achieved is rather that faith is to be placed in no one. For if we speak even against God when we lie, what evil so great can be found in any lie that we ought to avoid it in every way as most wicked?

But now notice how much more tolerably the Priscillianists lie compared with us, when they know that they are speaking deceitfully, those whom we think we should free by our lie from the falsehoods in which they are deceived by erring. The Priscillianist says that the soul is a part of God and of the same nature and substance as he. This is a great and detestable blasphemy. For it follows that the nature of God is taken captive, deceived, misled, disturbed and defiled, condemned and tormented. But if he too says this who wishes to free a man from so great an evil through a lie, let us see what difference there is between the two blasphemers. "A very great one," you say, "for the Priscillianist says this and also believes it, while the catholic does not believe it, although he says it." The one, then, blasphemes unknowingly, the other knowingly; the one against knowledge, the other against conscience; the one has the blindness of thinking false things, but in them he has at least the will to speak true things; the other, hidden, sees the truth and willingly speaks falsehood. "But the one," you will say, "teaches this in order to make people sharers in his error and madness, while the other says it in order to free people from that error and madness." I have already shown above how much harm is done even by what is believed to be going to profit. But meanwhile, if we weigh the present evils in these two (since the future goods that the catholic seeks from correcting the heretic are uncertain), who sins more gravely: the one who deceives a man unknowingly, or the one who blasphemes God knowingly? Surely he understands which is worse who with anxious godliness puts God before man. Add to this that if God is to be blasphemed so that we may bring men to praise him, then without doubt we invite men by our example and teaching not only to praise God but also to blaspheme him; for those whom we try to bring to the praises of God through blasphemies of God, if we do bring them, will learn not only to praise but also to blaspheme. These are the benefits we confer on those whom we free from the heretics by blaspheming, not ignorantly but knowingly. And whereas the apostle handed men over even to Satan himself so that they might learn not to blaspheme, we try to snatch men from Satan so that they may learn to blaspheme not through ignorance but through knowledge; and on ourselves, their teachers, we bring so great a ruin that, in order to catch heretics, we first become, which is certain, blasphemers of God, so that we may, which is uncertain, become teachers of his truth for the sake of freeing them?

Since, then, we would teach our people to blaspheme God so that the Priscillianists may believe them theirs, let us see what evil they themselves say when they lie so that we may believe them ours. They anathematize Priscillian and detest him to our satisfaction; they say that the soul is a creature of God, not a part of him; they curse the false martyrdoms of the Priscillianists; they extol with great praise the catholic bishops by whom that heresy was laid bare, attacked, and laid low; and other things of this kind. See, they speak the truth when they lie; not that the very same thing can at once be true and a lie, but they lie in one thing and speak truth in another; for when they lie that they are ours, they speak the truth about the catholic faith. And so they, in order not to be found out as Priscillianists, speak true things lyingly; but we, in order to find them, not only speak lyingly so as to be believed to belong to them, but also speak false things that we know belong to their error. So when they wish to be thought ours, what they say is partly false and partly true: it is false that they are ours, but true that the soul is not a part of God. But when we wish to be thought to belong to them, both things that we say are false: that we are Priscillianists and that the soul is a part of God. So they praise God, they do not blaspheme him, when they hide themselves; and when they do not hide themselves but bring out their own views, they do not know that they blaspheme. Therefore, if they are converted to the catholic faith, they console themselves, because they can say what the apostle said, who, having said among other things, "I was formerly a blasphemer," said, "I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly." We, on the contrary, if we utter this supposedly just lie to deceive and catch them, so that they may open themselves to us, certainly both say that we belong to the blaspheming Priscillianists and, so that they may believe us, blaspheme without the excuse of ignorance. For a catholic who wishes to be believed a heretic by blaspheming cannot say, "I did it ignorantly."

Always, brother, in such cases we must recall with fear: "Whoever denies me before men, I will deny him before my Father who is in heaven." Or does he not deny Christ before men who denies him before Priscillianists in order to lay them bare and catch them in their hiding by a blasphemous lie? And who doubts, I beg you, that Christ is denied when he is said not to be as he truly is, and is said to be as the Priscillianist believes him to be?

"But," you will say, "we cannot otherwise find the hidden wolves, clothed in sheep's skins, secretly and grievously ravaging the Lord's flock." How then did the Priscillianists become known before this hunt by lying was thought up? How was the lair of their author himself reached, who was surely more cunning and therefore better hidden? How were so many and such great ones exposed and condemned, and countless others partly corrected, partly corrected in appearance and gathered in by the church in its mercy? For the Lord, when he has mercy, gives many ways by which they may be tracked down; two of these are more fortunate than the others: that they be pointed out either by those whom they tried to seduce or by those whom they had already seduced, when these come to their senses and are converted. This happens more easily if their abominable error is overturned not by lying snares but by truthful arguments. You ought to spend your effort in writing these, since the Lord has given you the ability. When these wholesome writings, by which their insane perversity is destroyed, become better and better known, and are spread everywhere by catholic bishops who speak to the people or by any earnest people full of zeal for God, these will be the holy nets by which they may be caught truthfully, not searched out lyingly. For caught in this way they will either confess of their own accord what they were, and will either correct in agreement, or betray in mercy, others whom they know in their evil fellowship; or, if they are ashamed to confess what they have covered by long pretense, they will be healed by the hidden hand of God working the cure.

"But," you will say, "we penetrate their lairs much more easily if we lie that we are what they are." If this were permitted or expedient, Christ could have instructed his sheep to come to the wolves clothed in wolves' skins and find them out by the deceits of this art. He did not say this to them, not even when he foretold that he would send them into the midst of wolves. But you will say: "At that time they did not need to be searched out, since the wolves were quite open; their bites and savagery had to be endured." What then? When, foretelling later times, he said that ravening wolves would come in sheep's clothing, was there not room there for him to give this warning and say: "And you, to find them, put on wolves' clothing, but remain sheep within"? He did not say this. But when he had said, "Many will come to you in sheep's clothing, but inwardly they are ravening wolves," he did not add, "By your lies," but, "By their fruits you will know them." By truth lies must be guarded against, by truth caught, by truth slain. Far be it from us to overcome the blasphemies of the ignorant by blaspheming knowingly; far be it from us to guard against the evils of deceivers by imitating them. For how shall we guard against them if, in order to guard against them, we shall have them? For if, in order that one who blasphemes unknowingly may be caught, I blaspheme knowingly, what I do is worse than what I catch; if, in order that one who denies Christ unknowingly may be found, I deny Christ knowingly, the one whom I find in this way will follow me to perdition, since, in order to find him, I perish first.

Or perhaps one who strives to find Priscillianists in that way does not deny Christ, because he utters with the mouth what he does not believe in the heart? As if (as I have already said a little earlier), when it had been said, "With the heart one believes unto righteousness," it was added to no purpose, "With the mouth confession is made unto salvation." Did not almost all who denied Christ before persecutors hold in the heart what they believed about him, and yet, by not confessing with the mouth unto salvation, perish, except those who came back to life through repentance? Who is so empty-headed as to think that the apostle Peter had in his heart what he had in his mouth when he denied Christ? Surely in that denial he held the truth within and uttered a lie outwardly. Why then did he wash away with tears what he had denied with his mouth, if what he believed in his heart was enough for salvation? Why did he, speaking the truth in his heart, punish with such bitter weeping the lie that he uttered with his mouth, unless because he saw that it was a great ruin that he believed in his heart unto righteousness but did not confess with his mouth unto salvation?

Therefore what is written, "who speaks truth in his heart," is not to be taken as if, keeping the truth in the heart, one should speak a lie with the mouth. It was said because it can happen that someone speaks the truth with his mouth and it profits him nothing if he does not hold it in his heart, that is, if he does not himself believe what he says; as heretics do, and especially these same Priscillianists, when they do not indeed believe the catholic truth, but still speak it so as to be believed to be ours. They speak the truth, then, in their mouth, not in their heart. That is why they had to be distinguished from the one of whom it was said, "who speaks truth in his heart." But this truth the catholic, just as he speaks it in his heart because he so believes, must also speak in his mouth, so that he so preaches it; and against it let him have falsehood neither in his heart nor in his mouth, so that he both believes with the heart unto righteousness and makes confession with the mouth unto salvation. For in that psalm too, when it had been said, "who speaks truth in his heart," this was also added at once: "who has not practiced deceit with his tongue."

And what the apostle says, "Putting away lying, speak the truth each with his neighbor, for we are members of one another": far be it from us to understand it as if he permitted us to speak a lie with those who are not yet members of the body of Christ with us. It was said because each of us ought to regard everyone as what he wishes him to become, even if he has not yet become it; just as the Lord showed that the Samaritan, a foreigner, was the neighbor of the one to whom he showed mercy. He is to be held, then, as a neighbor, not an outsider, with whom we must act so that he may not remain an outsider; and if, because he has not yet become a partaker of our faith and sacrament, some truths are to be concealed from him, still false things are not on that account to be said.

For even in the times of the apostles there were those who preached the truth not in truth, that is, not with a truthful mind; of whom the apostle says that they proclaimed Christ not purely but through envy and rivalry. And so even then some were tolerated who proclaimed the truth with an impure mind; yet none were praised as proclaiming falsehood with a pure mind. Finally, he says of them, "Whether in pretense or in truth, let Christ be proclaimed"; but he would by no means say, "Let Christ first be denied, so that afterward he may be proclaimed."

Therefore hidden heretics can be tracked down in many ways, without the catholic faith being reviled or heretical ungodliness praised. But if heretical ungodliness could not be brought out of its caves at all unless the catholic tongue strayed from the path of truth, it would be more tolerable for the former to be hidden than for the latter to be cast down headlong; more tolerable for the foxes to lurk in their holes than for the hunters, in order to catch them, to fall into the pit of blasphemy; more tolerable for the faithlessness of the Priscillianists to be covered with the veil of truth than for the faith of catholics, lest it be praised by lying Priscillianists, to be denied by believing catholics. For if lies, not of just any kind but blasphemous ones, are just because they are told with this intention, that hidden heretics may be uncovered, then in this way adulteries too could be chaste, if they were committed with the same intention. What then? If some woman from among the unchaste Priscillianist women should cast her eye on a catholic Joseph and promise him that she would betray their hiding places if she obtained sexual immorality from him, and it were certain that if he consented she would fulfil what she promised, shall we judge that it should be done? Or shall we understand that such wares are by no means to be bought at such a price? Why then do we not buy the capture of heretics with the flesh sliding into adultery, and yet think it should be bought with the mouth fornicating in blasphemy? For either it will be lawful to defend both on equal grounds, so that these things are said not to be unjust because they were done with the intention of catching the unjust; or, if sound doctrine does not want us, even for the sake of finding heretics, to have intercourse with unchaste women, even in body only and not in mind, then surely, even for the sake of finding heretics, it does not want us, even in voice only and not in mind, either to preach unclean heresy or to blaspheme the chaste catholic faith. For the very command of the mind, which every lower movement of a man ought to obey, will not escape due reproach when something is done that ought not to be done, whether by a member or by a word. And yet even when it is done by a word, it is done by a member, since the tongue, by which a word is made, is a member; and no deed of ours is brought forth by any member unless it is first conceived in the heart, or rather, already brought forth within by thinking and consenting, it is then put outside by doing it through a member. So the mind is not excused from a deed when something is said to be done not from the mind, which nevertheless would not be done unless the mind decided that it should be done.