A Christian Directory, Part 1: Christian Ethics

by Richard Baxter

Direct. X. Foresee that which is like to entrap you in a lie, that you may prevent it. Let not the occasion and temptation surprise you unprepared. Foresight will make the temptation easy to be overcome, which unforeseen will be too strong for you.

Direct. XI. Get a tender conscience, and walk as in the sight and hearing of God, and as one that is passing to his judgment.[518] A seared conscience dare venture upon lies or any thing; but the fear of God is the soul's preservative. What makes men lie, but thinking they have to do with none but men? For they think by a lie to deceive a man, and hide the truth; but if they remembered that they have most to do with God, and that he is always present who cannot be deceived, and that his judgment will bring all secret things to light, and detect all their lies before all the world, they would not hire a torn and dirty cloak at so dear a rate, for so short a time. No wonder if men are liars that fear not God, and believe not the day of judgment.

Direct. XII. To save others from lying as well as yourselves, be sure to watch against it in your children, and wisely help them to see the evil of it. For children are very prone to it; and unwise correction frighteneth them into lies to save themselves, as indulgence and connivance do encourage them to it. Make them oft read such texts as these: Lev. xix. 11, "Ye shall not steal, nor deal falsely, nor lie one to another." Psal. xv. 2, "He that speaketh the truth from his heart," &c.[519] Isa. xxxvi. 8, "He said, Surely they are my people; children that will not lie; so he was their Saviour." John viii. 44, "The devil is a liar, and the father of it." Rev. xxi. 27; xxii. 15, "There shall in no wise enter into it any thing that defileth—or maketh a lie—For without are dogs—and whoever loveth and maketh a lie." Psal. lxiii. 11, "The mouth of him that speaketh lies shall be stopped." Psal. ci. 11, "He that speaketh lies shall not tarry in my sight." Prov. xix. 5, 9, "A false witness shall not be unpunished, and he that speaketh lies shall not escape" (shall perish). Prov. xxix. 12, "If a ruler hearken to lies all his servants are wicked:" so Psal. xxxi. 18; lii. 3. Psal. cxix. 163, "I hate and abhor lying, but thy law do I love." Prov. xiii. 5, "A righteous man hateth lying." Eph. iv. 35, "Wherefore putting away lying, speak every man truth with his neighbour, for we are members one of another:" q. d. A man would not lie to deceive his own members; no more should we to deceive one another. In a word, where the love of God and man prevaileth, there truth prevaileth; but where self-love, partiality, and carnal self-interest prevail, there lying is a household servant, and thought a necessary means to these ends.

But because lying is so common and so great a sin, and many cases occur about it daily, though I think what is said offereth matter enough to answer them, I shall mention some more of them distinctly, to help their satisfaction who cannot accommodate general answers to all their particular cases.

Quest. I. Is frequent known lying a certain sign of a graceless state, that is, a mortal sin, proving the sinner to be in a state of damnation?

Answ. The difficulty of this case doth no more concern lying, than any other sin of equal malignity. Therefore I must refer you to those places where I have opened the difference between mortal, reigning sins, and infirmities. At present take this brief solution. 1. It is a thing of too great difficulty, to determine just how many acts of a great sin may consist with a present state of grace (that is, of right by covenant to heaven). 2. All sin which consisteth with an habitual, predominant love of God and holiness, consisteth with a state of life, and no other. 3. He that seldom or never committeth such external crimes, and yet loveth not God, and heaven, and holiness above all the pleasures and interests of the flesh, is in a state of death. 4. It is certain that this love to God and holiness is not predominant, whose carnal interest and lust hath ordinarily in the drift and tenor of his life, more power to draw him to the wilful committing of known sin, than the said love of God, and heaven, and holiness have to keep him from it. For his servants men are, whom they obey, whether it be sin unto death, or obedience unto righteousness, Rom. vi. 16. 5. Therefore the way to know whether sin be mortified, or mortal, is, (1.) By feeling the true bent of the will, whether we love or hate it. (2.) By observing the true bent and tenor of our lives, whether God's interest in us, or the contrary, be predominant when we are ourselves, and are tempted to such sins. 6. He that will sin thus as oft as will stand with saving grace, shall never have the assurance of his sincerity, or the peace or comfort of a sound believer, till he repent and lead a better life. 7. He that in his sin retaineth the spirit of adoption, or the image of God, or habitual divine love, hath also habitual and virtual repentance for that very sin, before he actually repenteth; because he hath that habitual hatred of it, which will cause actual repentance, when he is composed to act according to his predominant habits. 8. In the mean time the state of such a sinner is, neither to be unregenerate, carnal, unholy, as he was before conversion, and so to lose all his right to life; nor yet to have so full a right as if he had not sinned: but a bar is put in against his claim, which must be removed before his right be full, and such as is ripe for present possession. 9. There are some sins which all men continue in while they live. As defect in the degrees of faith, hope, love, &c.; vain thoughts, words, disorder, passions, &c. And these sins are not totally involuntary; otherwise they were no sins. Yea, the evil is prevalent in the will against the good, so far as to commit those sins, though not so far as to vitiate the bent of heart or life. 10. There are some sins which none on earth do actually repent of, viz. those that they know not to be sins; and those that they utterly forget; and those faults which they are guilty of just at the time of dying. 11. In these cases, virtual, or implicit, or habitual repentance doth suffice to the preventing of damnation. As also a will to have lived perfectly sufficeth in the case of continued imperfections.[520] 12. Things work not on the will as they are in themselves; but as they are apprehended by the understanding: and that which is apprehended to be either of doubtful evil, or but a little sin and of little danger, will be much less resisted, and ofter committed, than sins that are clearly apprehended to be great. Therefore, where any sort of lie is apprehended thus, as of small or doubtful evil, it will be the ofter committed. 13. If this apprehension be wrong, and come from the predominancy of a carnal or ungodly heart, which will not suffer the understanding to do its office, nor to take that to be evil which he would not leave, then both the judgment and the lie are mortal, and not mortified, pardoned sins. 14. But if this misapprehension of the understanding do come from natural impotency, or unavoidable want of better information, or only from the fault of a vicious inclination, which yet is not predominant, but is the remnant of a vice which is mortified in the main; then neither the error nor the often lying is a mortal, but a mortified sin. As, for instance, If false teachers (as the Jesuits) should persuade a justified person, that a lie that hurteth no man, but is officious, is but a venial or no sin, it is possible for such a person often to commit it, though he err not altogether innocently. 15. Though it is true that all good christians should not indulge the smallest sin, and that true grace will make a man willing to forsake the least, yet certain experience telleth us, that some constant sinning (aforenamed) doth consist with grace in all that have it upon earth; and therefore that lesser sins, as thoughts, passions, are not resisted so much as greater be; and therefore that they are more indulged and favoured, or else they would not be committed. No good men rise up with so great and constant watchfulness against an idle thought or word, or a disorder in prayer, &c. as they do against a heinous sin.

He that would have this and all such cases resolved in a word, and not be put on trying the case by all these distinctions, must take another casuist, or rather a deceiver instead of a resolver: for I cannot otherwise resolve him.

Quest. II. Is it not contrary to the light of nature, to suffer, e. g. a parent, a king, myself, my country, rather to be destroyed, than to save them by a harmless lie?

Answ. No. Because, 1. Particular good must give place to common. And if once a lie may pass for lawful in cases where it seemeth to be good, it will overthrow human converse, and debauch man's nature and the world.