Augustine, founded on the words
of Jesus Christ, in the Gospel: "Woe to the blind leaders! woe to
the blind followers!- Vae caecis ducentibus! vae caecis sequentibus!"
But, to leave you no room in future, either to create such
impressions on the minds of others, or to harbour them in your own,
I shall tell you, fathers (and I am ashamed I should have to teach you
what I should have rather learnt from you), the marks which the
fathers of the Church have given for judging when our animadversions
flow from a principle of piety and charity, and when from a spirit
of malice and impiety.
The first of these rules is that the spirit of piety always
prompts us to speak with sincerity and truthfulness; whereas malice
and envy make use of falsehood and calumny. "Splendentia et
vehementia, sed rebus veris- Splendid and vehement in words, but
true in things," as St. Augustine says. The dealer in falsehood is
an agent of the devil. No direction of the intention can sanctify
slander; and though the conversion of the whole earth should depend on
it, no man may warrantably calumniate the innocent: because none may
do the least evil, in order to accomplish the greatest good; and, as
the Scripture says, "the truth of God stands in no need of our lie."
St. Hilary observes that "it is the bounden duty of the advocates of
truth, to advance nothing in its support but true things." Now,
fathers, I can declare before God that there is nothing that I
detest more than the slightest possible deviation from the truth,
and that I have ever taken the greatest care, not only not to
falsify (which would be horrible), but not to alter or wrest, in the
slightest possible degree, the sense of a single passage.
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