and on the other hand in such a statement as this, in Benjamin’s great work on Sales:  “The nondisclosure of hidden facts [to a party in interest] is the more objectionable when any artifice is employed to throw the buyer off his guard; as by telling half the truth."[3] It is not in any principles which are recognized by the legal profession as binding on the conscience, that loose ethics are to find defense or support.

[Footnote 1:  See Bispham’s Principles of Equity, p. 261, (3d ed.); Broom’s Legal Maxims, p. 781 f. (7th Am. ed.); Merrill’s American and English Encyclopedia of Law, art.  “Fraud.”]

[Footnote 2:  See Anderson’s Dictionary of Law, p. 220; Abbott’s Law Dictionary, I., 53.]

[Footnote 3:  Treatise on the Law of Sale of Personal Property, p. 451 f.]

But the profession that has most at stake in this discussion, and that, indeed, is most involved in its issue, is the ministerial, or clerical, profession.  While it was Jewish rabbis who affirmed most positively, in olden time, the unwavering obligations of truthfulness, it was Jewish rabbis, also, who sought to find extenuation or excuse for falsehoods uttered with a good intention.  And while it was Christian Fathers, like the Shepherd of Hermas, and Justin Martyr, and Basil the Great, and Augustine, who insisted that no tolerance should be allowed to falsehood or deceit, it was also Christian Fathers, like Gregory of Nyssa, and Chrysostom, who having practiced deceit for what they deemed a good end, first attempted a special plea for such falsities as they had found convenient in their professional labors.  And it was other Christian Fathers, like Origen and Jerome, who sought to find arguments for laxity of practice, at this point, in the course of the Apostles themselves.

All the way along the centuries, while the strongest defenders of the law of truthfulness have been found among clergymen, more has been written in favor of the lie of necessity by clergymen than by men of any other class or profession.  And if it be true, as many of these have claimed, that deceit and falsehood are a duty, on the part of a God-loving teacher, toward those persons who, through weakness, or mental incapacity, or moral obliquity, are in the relation to him of wards of love, or of subjects of guardianship, there is no profession in which there is more of a call for godly deception, and for holy falsehood, than the Christian ministry.  If it be true that a lie, or a falsehood, is justifiable in order to the saving of the physical life of another, how much better were it to tell such a lie in the loving desire to save a soul.