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JOSEPH: All liberty in the matter of wives and many concubines, as the
end of time is approaching and the multiplying of the human race completed,
ought rightly to be cut off by evangelical perfection, as being no longer
necessary. For up to the coming of Christ it was well that the blessing of
the original sentence should be in full vigour, whereby it was said:
"Increase and multiply, and fill the earth." And therefore it was quite
right that from the root of human fecundity which happily flourished in the
synagogue, in accordance with that dispensation of the times, the buds of
angelical virginity should spring, and the fragrant flowers of continence
be produced in the Church. But that lying was even then condemned the text
of the whole Old Testament clearly shows, as it says: "Thou shall destroy
all them that speak lies;" and again: "The bread of lying is sweet to a
man, but afterwards his mouth is filled with gravel;" and the Giver of the
law himself says: "Thou shalt avoid a lie." But we said that it was then
properly employed as a last resort when some need or plan of salvation was
linked on to it, on account of which it ought not to be condemned. As is
the case, which you mentioned, of king David when in his flight from the
unjust persecution of Saul, to Abimelech the priest he used lying words,
not with the object of getting any gain nor with the desire to injure
anybody, but simply to save himself from that most iniquitous persecution;
inasmuch as he would not stain his hands with the blood of the hostile
king, so often delivered up to him by God; as he said: "The Lord be
merciful to me that I may do no such thing to my master the Lord's
anointed, as to lay my hand upon him, because he is the Lord's
anointed." And therefore these plans which we hear that holy men under
the old covenant adopted either from the will of God, or for the
prefiguring of spiritual mysteries or for the salvation of some people, we
too cannot refuse altogether, when necessity constrains us, as we see that
even apostles did not avoid them, where the consideration of something
profitable required them: which in the meanwhile we will for a time
postpone, while we first discuss those instances which we propose still to
bring forward from the Old Testament, and afterwards we shall more suitably
introduce them so as more readily to prove that good and holy men, both in
the Old and in the New Testament, were entirely at one with each other in
these contrivances. For what shall we say of that pious fraud of Hushai to
Absalom for the salvation of king David, which though uttered with all
appearance of good-will by the deceiver and cheat, and opposed to the good
of him who asked advice, is yet commended by the authority of Holy
Scripture, which says: "But by the will of the Lord the profitable counsel
of Ahithophel was defeated that the Lord might bring evil upon Absalom?"
Nor could that be blamed which was done for the right side with a right
purpose and pious intent, and was planned for the salvation and victory of
one whose piety was pleasing to God, by a holy dissimulation. What too
shall we say of the deed of that woman, who received the men who had been
sent to king David by the aforesaid Hushai, and hid them in a well, and
spread a cloth over its mouth, and pretended that she was drying pearl-
barley, and said "They passed on after tasting a little water"; and by
this invention saved them from the hands of their pursuers? Wherefore
answer me, I pray you, and say what you would have done, if any similar
situation had arisen for you, living now under the gospel; would you prefer
to hide them with a similar falsehood, saying in the same way: "They passed
on after tasting a little water," and thus fulfil the command: "Deliver
those who are being led to death, and spare not to redeem those who are
being killed;" or by speaking the truth, would you have given up those
in hiding to the men who would kill them? And what then becomes of the
Apostle's words: "Let no man seek his own but the things of another:" and:
"Love seeketh not her own, but the things of others;" and of himself he
says: "I seek not mine own good but the good of many that they may be
saved?" For if we seek our own, and want obstinately to keep what is
good for ourselves, we must even in urgent cases of this sort speak the
truth, and so become guilty of the death of another: but if we prefer what
is for another's advantage to our own good, and satisfy the demands of the
Apostle, we shall certainly have to put up with the necessity of lying. And
therefore we shall not be able to keep a perfect heart of love, or to seek,
as Apostolic perfection requires, the things of others, unless we relax a
little in those things which concern the strictness and perfection of our
own lives, and choose to condescend with ready affection to what is useful
to others, and so with the Apostle become weak to the weak, that we may be
able to gain the weak.
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