worsted in its conflicts with Jesuitism. The Moral-Theologians set to work, and it soon appeared that Innocent XI. might have spared his pains: he only gave one triumph more to casuistical ingenuity.

Given the problem, how to retain a certain practice, and at the same time to pay outward respect to a Papal decree forbidding it, the method to be adopted is the following :-Take the thing condemned, and divide it into two species, distinguished from each other by a distinction without a difference: assume that the Papal condemnation applies to either one of these species, but not to the other: range everything which you wish to do under the uncondemned head, whatever you have no temptation towards under the other: the result will be the conclusion desired. Thus, the Pope condemned Mental Restriction: immediately Mental Restriction is divided into two kinds,-Pure Mental Restriction, and Non-pure Mental Restriction. There is no moral difference between them; but the Papal condemnation is declared to be confined to the former, and so the old practice goes on as securely and merrily as ever. Morally speaking, the present system, dogmatically enunciated, differs in no essential point from that of Garnet, Tresham, and Blackwell.1

Very different is the doctrine of S. Augustine, to whose authority, as well as to the example of our Lord, we have seen that S. Alfonso had the hardihood to appeal. We will now offer our readers a specimen of the teaching of the great Doctor of Hippo on this point. It may be that Liguori will have done his cause little good by appealing to the uncompromising Moralist of the Early Church. He may,

1 This general method of dealing with condemnations is well illustrated in the case of clerical hunting. The steps are as follows:-1. Clerical hunting is forbidden in general terms. 2. The Doctors understand in common, that this prohibition applies only to clamorous hunting, which takes place with a noise. 3. Neither does it apply to all clamorous hunting with a noise, but only to frequent clamorous hunting with a noise. 4. Neither does it apply to all frequent clamorous hunting with a noise, but only to frequent clamorous hunting with a noise, which is scandalous or very expensive. 5. Sporer, Molina, Cajetan, and Sa, say that merely for hunting, without any adjunct, a clergyman is not easily to be condemned of mortal sin. 6. Layman, Lessius, Sa, Valentia, &c. think that such hunting may be altogether blameless, if it is rare and moderate, or from necessity or for exercise. 7. A modern author, who has written a book called "Instructions for New Confessors," says that nonclamorous hunting for the sake of honest recreation is perfectly allowable, and that, canonically, clamorous hunting is not, according to the more common opinion, a mortal sin, except with the adjuncts of contempt or contumacy. Monks are forbidden clamorous hunting more strictly. They are only allowed, without grave sin, to go out two or three times a-year, in case they can do so without giving scandal, or making a great noise.-(Theol. Mor. 4. 606. Hom. Ap. 10. 72.)

perhaps, serve to point out that Rome admits of development in morals as well as in doctrine: that as what was once rejected as false is accepted as true after the decree of a Pope; so what was rejected as immorality by S. Augustine has been made moral by the decision of the casuists. How do you 'manage,' asks Pascal, 'when the Fathers of the Church hap'pen to differ from any of your casuists? The Fathers,' is the reply, were good enough for the morality of their own 'times, but they lived too far back for that of the present age, 'which is no longer regulated by them but by the modern 'casuists. At their advent S. Augustine, S. Chrysostom, 'S. Ambrose, S. Jerome, and all the rest, so far as morals are 'concerned, disappeared from the stage.'

The treatise of S. Augustine, to which reference was made, is that which he wrote against Lying. We will now shortly draw out the principles there laid down. We shall feel like

a man who has left behind him the fogs and malaria of a reeking morass, and risen to the healthy atmosphere of mountain scenery. S. Augustine has written two books on the subject of Lying, and has many passages on the same subject interspersed amidst his voluminous writings. It is observable that he nowhere makes a distinction between lying and equivocating. Equivocating is in his estimation lying, and the same definition includes Amphibology and Mendacity. The double heart' is, according to his teaching, the source of the accursed thing, and any man who has one thing in his mind, and enunciates another by words or any sorts of signs,' is guilty of the sin. Wordjugglery is a thing unknown to him, for the sage of Hippo was too wise to be deceived himself, and too honest to deceive others by such a transparent fallacy as that which lies at the bottom of the justification of equivocation. What is the use of a word? To represent to others a conception existing in our mind. If, then, the word which we use represents to the person to whom we speak, not the conception which we have in our mind, but something else, the assertion involved in the proposition containing that word is really two assertions. Thus, in the case given above, the heir (air) was present,' is of course two assertions, one materially true, the other materially false: again, the proposition, 'The moon is light,' contains two assertions, one materially true, viz. the moon is not obscured,' the other materially false, viz. the moon is deficient in weight,' and so every proposition with an ambiguous word contains really two assertions. Now the fact of these assertions being materially both true, or both false, or, as is generally the case, one true and the other false, is not of the slightest value with regard to the moral act of the person speaking. If we persist in making

use of a proposition thus containing two assertions, one of which is true, viz. that which the words signify according to our acceptation, and the other false, viz. that which we know the words signify in our neighbour's acceptation, we are simply and absolutely guilty of moral falsehood. It is not to be wondered at, then, that in S. Augustine's writings no distinction is drawn between equivocating and lying, because equivocating and lying are morally identical.

The following passage will show how clearly his philosophic mind saw that moral truthfulness in the speaker did not depend upon the material truth or falsehood of the thing spoken. It is not directly upon equivocation, but upon a kindred kind of lying:

'A man is deceived when he thinks what he says to be true, and it is really false: a man lies, when he thinks something to be false and says it as though true, whether it be really true or false. Mark the addition which I have made. Whether it be really true or false, yet, if a man thinks it false and asserts it as true, he lies, for he is aiming to deceive. What good is it to him, that it is true? He thinks it false, and says it is as though it were true. True it is in itself, what he says, in itself it is true to him it is false. What he is conscious of and what he speaks are not the same: he thinks within himself that one thing is true, and utters another as though it were true. His heart is double, not single, he does not bring out what he has there. The double heart has long since been reproved, "Deceitful lips . . dissemble in their double heart." Ps. xii. 2. What is deceit? When one thing is pretended and another done. Deceitful lips are when the heart is not single.'-Serm. 133. vol. v. p. 739.

In his books De Mendacio and Contra Mendacium, S. Augustine enumerates eight sorts of lying. Every one he rejects uncompromisingly. He denies that we may at any time be guilty of moral falsehood under whatever temptation we may be. The sin of the tongue in violating veracity is as great, he says, as the sin of the hand in theft or in murder, or, at least, we are no more justified in committing the former than the latter. He discusses all the examples of apparent falsehood in the Old and New Testaments, to which those who had a theory of lying appealed in his days as they do now, and concludes that 'for 'the examples which are brought forward out of the Holy Scriptures, either they are not falsehoods, but are supposed to 'be such by not being understood; or, if they are falsehoods, 'they are not proposed as objects of imitation.' He does not shrink from meeting difficult cases. He puts the very same case which we have before had with respect to S. Francis of Assisi. The bright thought of pointing down his sleeve had not, however, then arisen, and not even S. Augustine's sagacity could suggest it. Leaving that ingenious device to be recommended by saints of a more modern date, he solves the question in this

you

fashion. Suppose that a man flies to a spot for refuge, and see where he conceals himself; you are questioned about him : are you to lie? Your answer should be, 'I will not betray, and I will not lie.' But the question may be put in such a form that mere silence, or saying that you would not tell, might betray him, and you could avert his danger by a falsehood. Your answer should be, 'I know where he is, but I will never show the place;' for if you refuse to answer whether or no he is in a certain place, you will rouse certain suspicion with respect to that place; but by prefacing your answer by a confession of your knowledge of his whereabouts, you may turn away the attention of the inquirer from any particular spot, and make him press you to discover the object of his search; and if for your fidelity and humanity you have to endure suffering, your conduct will be not only free from blame but praiseworthy. This is the substance of his solution of the difficulty.1

Now we can perfectly conceive the possibility of a case arising in which the two virtues of veracity and charity might so clash as to make it, at least, pardonable to deflect somewhat from the rigid observance of the former. S. Augustine does not admit such a possibility. You must not destroy your own soul,' he replies, "for any supposed good of your neighbour, spiritual or temporal.' And yet it is to S. Augustine that Liguori refers in justification of his Equivocation and non-pure Mental Reservation, which, according to S. Augustine's definition, are merely forms of expressing a Lie.

With like hardihood S. Augustine is quoted in the Breviary as addressing the Blessed Virgin with the title of 'The only Hope of Sinners,' although the Sermon in which such words occur is known by every one of moderate attainments to be spurious, and is excluded from S. Augustine's works by the Benedictine editors. The value of truth, for truth's sake, is a thing apparently unappreciated and inappreciable by the Romish theological mind, in so far as it is Romish or distinct from Catholic. In one passage in this very treatise S. Augustine seems to have had before his eyes, by a prescient anticipation, the race of Salamanca doctors, Bonacinas, Escobars, and Liguoris. And there are among them learned men,' he cries, 'who actually lay down rules and fix limits when a man ought, 'and when he ought not, to commit perjury! O fountains of 'tears, where are ye? Where shall we go? Where shall we "hide ourselves from the wrath of Truth, if we not only do not guard against lies, but dare over and above to teach perjury? And here is a warning which may not be amiss at present in England.

1 De Mendacio, cap. 13.

This, again, is a most miserable thing: even those who are just become our converts don't know how to believe us; for, on their suspecting that we are lying to them about the Catholic dogmas too, so as to be concealing something or other which we think true, you would be sure to say, "I acted in that way, then, in order to catch you;" but what will you answer when the other says, " And how am I to tell that you are not doing the same now in order not to be caught by me?" Will any one be persuaded that a man who will lie in order to catch another, will not lie in order not to be caught himself? See you not the tendency of this pestilential thing? It tends to make every one a justifiable object of suspicion to every one else, us to them, they to us, brother to brother. And so while the Faith is taught by falsehood, the result is rather that we have no faith in any one.'-Cont. Mend. cap. 4.

In short, we are reduced to that pleasant state of war and fencing on the plea of which Rome defends her Equivocation and non-pure Mental Reservation.

Thus we see that there is some difference between the Theory of Truthfulness held by Modern Rome and that held by the Ancient Church. We must now compare the teaching of England's Moral Theologians on the same point. Bishop Sanderson, whose works we are glad to learn are about to be re-issued from the University Press,' has left behind him Lectures delivered in Oxford on the Obligation of Conscience, and on the Obligation of Oaths. We will make a few extracts from the latter of these works, in order to show the difference in principle between the teaching of a manly straightforward English mind, nurtured in the University of Oxford, in the bosom of England's Church, and that of a warped, however devout, Italian conscience, such as Liguori's, whom Rome has honoured with her beatification and canonization.

'An oath,' says Bishop Sanderson, 'is a religious act in 'which God is called to witness for the confirmation of some ' matter in doubt.' The main division of oaths is into assertory and promissory; the first having respect to what is present or past, the second to what is future. We take our extracts from an old translation of the year 1655, which professes to have been made by the special command of King Charles I. and revised by the royal hand."

'Whosoever sweareth, obligeth himself ipso facto, to manifest truth in that which he is about to say, whether it be in a matter past or present,

This has now taken place. They have been collected and edited under the careful and learned superintendence of the Rev. W. Jacobson, D.D. Canon of Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity.

2 It is more than probable that this translation was not only revised, but also made by King Charles himself.-See the Preface to Dr. Jacobson's Edition of Bishop Sanderson's Works, p. x.