[Footnote 1:  Smith and Wace’s Dictionary of Christian Biography, I., 532.]

Augustine, on the other hand, looks at this question, in accordance with the qualities of his logical mind, in its relation to an absolute standard; and he is ready to accept the consequences of an adherence to that standard, whether they be in themselves desirable or deplorable.  He is not afraid to define a lie, and to stand by his definition in his argument.  He sees and notes the difference between justifiable concealment, and concealment that is for the purpose of deception.  “It is lawful then,” he says on this point, “to conceal at fitting time whatever seems fit to be concealed:  but to tell a lie is never lawful, therefore neither to conceal by telling a lie."[1] In his treatise “On Lying” (De Mendacid),[2] and in his treatise “Against Lying” (Contra Mendaciuni)[3] as well as in his treatise on “Faith, Hope, and Love” (Enchiridion),[4] and again in his Letters to Jerome,[5] Augustine states the principle involved in this vexed question of the ages, and goes over all the arguments for and against the so-called “lie of necessity.”  He sees a lie to be a sin per se, and therefore never admissible for any purpose whatsoever.  He sees truthfulness to be a duty growing out of man’s primal relation to God, and therefore binding on man while man is in God’s sight.  He strikes through the specious arguments based on any temporary advantages to be secured through lying, and rejects utterly the suggestion that man may do evil that good may come.

[Footnote 1:  The Nicene and Post-Nicene Fathers, first series (Am. ed.), IX., 466.]

[Footnote 2:  Ibid., III., 455-477.]

[Footnote 3:  Ibid., pp. 479-500.]

[Footnote 4:  Ibid., pp. 230-276.]

[Footnote 5:  Ibid., I., “Letters of St. Augustine.”]

The sound words of Augustine on this question, as based on his sound arguments, come down to us with strength and freshness through the intervening centuries; and they are worthy of being emphasized as the expressions of unchanging truth concerning the duty of truthfulness and the sin of lying.  “There is a great question about lying,” he says at the start, “which often arises in the midst of our everyday business, and gives us much trouble, that we may not either rashly call that a lie which is not such, or decide that it is sometimes right to tell a lie; that is, a kind of honest, well-meant, charitable lie.”  This question he discusses with fulness, and in view of all that can be said on both sides.  Even though life or salvation were to pivot on the telling of a lie, he is sure that no good to be gained could compensate for the committal of a sin.