Excerpt: ... 1: Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, in his Works, X., 100-132. When he attempts the definition of a lie, however, Jeremy Taylor would seem to claim that injustice toward others and an evil motive are of its very essence, and that, if these be lacking, a lie is not a lie. "Lying is to be understood to be something said or written to the hurt of a neighbor, which cannot be understood by the hearer or reader otherwise than to differ from the mind of him that speaks." As Melanchthon says, "To lie is to deceive ...
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Excerpt: ... 1: Jeremy Taylor's Ductor Dubitantium, in his Works, X., 100-132. When he attempts the definition of a lie, however, Jeremy Taylor would seem to claim that injustice toward others and an evil motive are of its very essence, and that, if these be lacking, a lie is not a lie. "Lying is to be understood to be something said or written to the hurt of a neighbor, which cannot be understood by the hearer or reader otherwise than to differ from the mind of him that speaks." As Melanchthon says, "To lie is to deceive our neighbor to his hurt." "If a lie be unjust, it can never become lawful; but if it can be separate from injustice, then it may be innocent." Jeremy Taylor naturally falls back on the Bible stories of the Hebrew midwives and Rahab the harlot, and assumes that God commended their lying, as lying, because they had a good end in view; and he asserts that "it is necessary sometimes by a lie to advantage charity by losing of a truth to save a life," and that "to tell a lie for charity, to save a man's life, the life of a friend, of a husband, of a prince, of an useful and a public person, hath not only been done in all times, but commended by great and wise and good men." From this it would appear that lying, which Jeremy Taylor sets out with denouncing as contrary to God's nature, and as declared by our Saviour to be always of the Devil, may, under certain circumstances, be a godly sin. Gregory of Nyssa and young Chrysostom could not have done better than this in showing the sinlessness of a sin in a good cause. Seeing that concealment of that which is true is often a duty, and seeing also that concealment of that which ought to be disclosed is often practically a lie, Jeremy Taylor apparently; jumps to the conclusion that concealment and equivocation and lying are practically the same thing, and that therefore lying is sometimes a duty, while again it is a sin. He holds that the right to be spoken to in truthfulness, "though it be regularly...
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