A lying God would deceive the whole church; the oath before the king’s council; the midwives of Exodus

Nor is there doubt that no virtue is to be found in man whose idea or exemplar is not in God; and God, by a virtue above every genus, is so virtuous that he could not be the exemplar of justice, mercy, patience, liberality, and so of the others, unless he were himself supremely just, merciful, patient and liberal; and so of the principles of every genus of virtue.¹ And so, antecedently to the virtue of lying, 161God must be supremely a liar. For it is not to be imagined how the habit of lying would more fittingly denominate its subject than as "liar", since to lie would be a work of virtue. Again, I suppose from the faithex fide: as faith teaches; with a genitive, from the faith of [scripture] of scripture that God says whatever any creature says well. This is clear from the fact that every creature, as such, is the instrument of God, who speaks more principally than his pipe, according to the manner of speaking of Psalm 84:9: "I will hear what the Lord God will speak in me"; and the Apostle, 2 Corinthians 13:3: "Do you seek a proof of Christ that speaketh in me?"² From which, together with true [premisses], it followssequitur: it follows that both the Trinity and Christ in his humanity make, in every Christian liar, whatever virtuous lie [he tells]; and since "virtuous" is not a diminishing qualifierdistrahens: diminishing qualifier, but rather "vicious" is, it follows that God makes a lie without qualificationsimpliciter / secundum quid: without qualification / in a certain respect; and since he says what is false with the same intention as the Christian who lies piously, it follows that God lies most principally, and consequently is "a liar, and the father thereof", as Christ says of the devil himself, John 8:44.³ For when God speaks a lie in that way, "he speaketh of his own", since he is the fount and origin of lying; and so, when he tells the angels the truth in the Word, by lying to us he would be double-minded, and there would be in him "It is, and It is not", against the Apostle, 2 Corinthians 1:17. Indeed, since he himself is all truth, by denying the truth by virtue of lying he could deny himself, against the Apostle, 2 Timothy 2:13 ("he cannot deny himself"); and there would be, by reason of a lying principle, a cataclysm of the whole Christian faith.⁴ For since, according to those who hold this opinion, God can lie, and cannot have the denomination of a virtue unless he has it in the highest degree and in a certain way infinitely, it follows from the infinity of his immense mendacity that in the whole faith of his scripture he could have deceived the whole churchecclesia: church 162guilefully. For otherwise an end would have to be assigned to his immense mendacity, up to which and not beyond he could have deceived; which I believe will not be granted, since it is commonly said that he is infinitely merciful, but only finitely one who shows mercy.⁵

As to those two pieces of evidenceevidencia: evidence, that we ought to have lied against our oath, so pious and lawful, before the council of our king, I call God and the divine powers to witness that among all the doctrinesdoctrina: doctrine or counsels I have heard none has met me harder or more detestable.⁶ Therefore it seems to me that it could have been said less badly in private than thus publicly in the schools; for one lying thus would manifestly have incurred perjury and the infamy which he was avoiding, and so would culpably have inferredconcludere: to infer, according to the goal of refutationredarguere: to refute, chiefly against himself.⁷ Therefore it is less evil, without damage to the soul, patiently to suffer detractions and scandals, than, by lying and consequently wronging the whole created universe, to offend the lord of truth. For no case can be imagined, nor fictionficticia: fiction found, in which it is lawful to lie; rather, as lying grows, even among the clergyclerus; clericus: the clergy; cleric, more than usual, it would be the doctor’s work to bring forth from the treasury of scripture reasons and testimonies of the saints in detestation of lying, and not to foster lying with lies of allegation and with sophistical arguments.⁸ I for my part would shudder to bring in this school as a doctor of lying, since from frailty we are all too prone to it without being led further astray by a foreign science of lying; and so a doctor teaching that it is lawful to lie proceeds imperfectly unless he teaches how it is lawful to lie, and consequently unless he teaches how we ought to lie; and so, according to the school of lying, it would be praiseworthy to lie by falsely feigning foreign doctors 163and sayings of holy doctors, to give colour to this teachingsentencia: CONTEXTUAL: teaching / sentence.⁹ But who would believe such a school? And I say "with lies of allegation" because the saying of Augustine on that [verse] of Psalm 5:7, "Thou wilt destroy all that speak a lie", was alleged against me in this form: "Many lies," he says, "seem [to be told] for someone’s safety or advantage, not from malice but from kindness: such was that of the midwives in Exodus, who reported what was false to Pharaoh, so that the infants of the sons of Israel should not be killed; but even these are praised not in the thing but in the guile."¹⁰ And here those who allege this form of words note how there is a pious guile by which it is lawful for us to deceive our neighbour by lying. But I have looked into many books of Augustine in which he says consistently that those midwives sinned in that lie, although the sin was profitable to the Hebrews; hence, since no good is unrewarded, God, for the piety which they had, caused them to be rewarded in such a way.¹¹ Hence the Master of the Histories, on Exodus, chapter 3, which begins thus, "On the promise of the midwives", speaks thus: "Because they feared God, he built them houses, that is, he enriched them, since they were poor, or made them fruitful, since they were barren." Augustine indeed says that the midwives sinned venially, but Gregory seems to hold that [they sinned] mortally; for he says that the reward of their kindness could not be repaid in eternal life, but because of the fault of lying was turned aside into an earthly recompense.¹²