43. So great blindness,
moreover, hath occupied men’s minds, that to them it is too
little if we pronounce some lies not to be sins; but they must
needs pronounce it to be sin in some things if we refuse to lie:
and to such a pass have they been brought by defending lying, that
even that first kind which is of all the most abominably wicked
they pronounce to have been used by the Apostle Paul. For in the
Epistle to the Galatians, written as it was, like the rest, for
doctrine of religion and piety, they say that he has told a lie, in
the passage where he says concerning Peter and Barnabas, “When I
saw that they walked not uprightly according to the truth of the
Gospel.”2380
For, while
they wish to
defend Peter from error, and from that pravity of way
into which he had fallen; the very way of
religion in which is
salvation for all men, they by
breaking and mincing the
authority
of the Scriptures do endeavor themselves to
overthrow. In which
they do not see that it is not only
lying, but perjury that they
lay to the charge of the
Apostle in the very
doctrine of
piety,
that is, in an
Epistle in which he
preaches the
Gospel; seeing that
he there saith, before he relates that matter, “What I
write unto
you, behold, before
God, I
lie not.”
2381
But it is time that we set bounds
to this disputation: in the consideration and treatment whereof
altogether there is nothing more meet to be, before all else, borne
in
mind and made our prayer, than that which the same
Apostle
saith: “
God is
faithful, Who will not suffer you to be tempted
above that ye are able to bear, but will with the temptation make
also a way to escape, that ye may be able to bear it.”
2382
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