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| Men’s Errors Vary Very Much in the Magnitude of the Evils They Produce; But Yet Every Error is in Itself an Evil.
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Chapter 19.—Men’s Errors
Vary Very Much in the Magnitude of the Evils They Produce; But Yet
Every Error is in Itself an Evil.
In some things, then, it is a great
evil to be deceived; in some it is a small evil; in some no evil at
all; and in some it is an actual advantage. It is to his grievous
injury that a man is deceived when he does not believe what leads
to eternal life, or believes what leads to eternal death. It is a
small evil for a man to be deceived, when, by taking falsehood for
truth, he brings upon himself temporal annoyances; for the patience
of the believer will turn even these to a good use, as when, for
example, taking a bad man for a good, he receives injury from him.
But one who believes a bad man to be good, and yet suffers no
injury, is nothing the worse for being deceived, nor does he fall
under the prophetic denunciation: “Woe to those who call evil
good!”1112
For we are
to understand that this is spoken not about evil men, but about the
things that make men evil. Hence the man who calls adultery good,
falls justly under that prophetic denunciation. But the man who
calls the adulterer good, thinking him to be chaste, and not
knowing him to be an adulterer, falls into no error in regard to
the nature of good and evil, but only makes a mistake as to the
secrets of human conduct. He calls the man good on the ground of
believing him to be what is undoubtedly good; he calls the
adulterer evil, and the pure man good; and he calls this man good,
not knowing him to be an adulterer, but believing him to be pure.
Further, if by making a mistake one escape death, as I have said
above once happened to me, one even derives some advantage from
one’s mistake. But when I assert that in certain cases a man may
be deceived without any injury to himself, or even with some
advantage to himself, I do not mean that the mistake in itself is
no evil, or is in any sense a good; I refer only to the evil that
is avoided, or the advantage that is gained, through making the
mistake. For the mistake, considered in itself, is an evil: a great
evil if it concern a great matter, a small evil if it concern a
small matter, but yet always an evil. For who that is of sound mind
can deny that it is an evil to receive what is false as if it were
true, and to reject what is true as if it were false, or to hold
what is uncertain as certain, and what is certain as uncertain? But
it is one thing to think a man good when he is really bad, which is
a mistake; it is another thing to suffer no ulterior injury in
consequence of the mistake, supposing that the bad man whom we
think good inflicts no damage upon us. In the same way, it is one
thing to think that we are on the right road when we are not; it is
another thing when this mistake of ours, which is an evil, leads to
some good, such as saving us from an ambush of wicked
men.E.C.F. INDEX & SEARCH
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