Arguing that a lie is essentially opposed to God’s truth—­by which alone man can have eternal life—­Augustine insists that to attempt to save another’s life through lying, is to set off one’s eternal life against the mere bodily life of another.  “Since then by lying eternal life is lost, never for any man’s temporal life must a lie be told.  And as to those who take it ill, and are indignant that one should refuse to tell a lie, and thereby slay his own soul in order that another may grow old in the flesh, what if by our committing adultery a person might be delivered from death:  are we therefore to steal, to commit whoredom....  To ask whether a man ought to tell a lie for the safety of another, is just the same as asking whether for another’s safety a man ought to commit iniquity.”

“Good men,” he says, “should never tell lies.”  “To tell a lie is never lawful, therefore neither to conceal [when concealment is desirable] by telling a lie.”  Referring to the fact that some seek to find a justification in the Bible teachings for lying in a good cause,—­“even in the midst of the very words of the divine testimonies seeking place for a lie,”—­he insists, after a full examination of this claim, “that those [cited] testimonies of Scripture have none other meaning than that we must never at all tell a lie.”

“A lie is not allowable, even to save another from injury.”  “Every lie must be called a sin.”  “Nor are we to suppose that there is any lie that is not a sin, because it is sometimes possible, by telling a lie, to do service to another.”  “It cannot be denied that they have attained a very high standard of goodness who never lie except to save a man from injury; but in the case of men who have reached this standard, it is not the deceit, but their good intention, that is justly praised, and sometimes even rewarded,”—­as in the case of Rahab in the Bible story.  “There is no lie that is not contrary to truth.  For as light and darkness, piety and impiety, justice and injustice, sin and righteousness, health and sickness, life and death, so are truth and a lie contrary the one to the other.  Whence by how much we love the former, by so much ought we to hate the latter.”

“It does indeed make very much difference for what cause, with what end, with what intention, a thing be done:  but those things which are clearly sins, are upon no plea of a good cause, with no seeming good end, no alleged good intention, to be done.  Those works, namely, of men, which are not in themselves sins, are now good, now evil, according as their causes are good or evil....  When, however, the works in themselves are evil,... who is there that will say, that upon good causes, they may be done, so as either to be no sins, or, what is more absurd, to be just sins?” “He who says that some lies are just, must be judged to say no other than that some sins are just, and that therefore some things are just which are unjust:  than which what can be more absurd?” “Either then we are to eschew lies by right doing, or to confess them [when guilty of them] by repenting:  but not, while they unhappily abound in our living, to make them more by teaching also.”