7. Seek to Live with the Truth

“Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour” (Exodus 20:16).
Our Lord is Truth itself: “I am the way, the truth, and the life” (John 14:6).
To walk in falsehood is to walk with the father of lies (John 8:44).

7-1. Speak no harmful lie.
St Augustine (†430), in his treatise De Mendacio, declared that every lie is sinful, and a lie told to harm another is doubly grievous.
Even the smallest falsehood, repeated, buildeth a tower of Babel between souls.

7-2. Bear no false witness, neither in court nor in daily converse.
The Council of Elvira (c. 306) and the penitential books before the year 1200 imposed heavy penance upon perjurers.
“These six things doth the Lord hate… a lying tongue… a false witness that speaketh lies” (Proverbs 6:16-19).

7-3. Embrace truth even when it costeth thee.
The martyrs chose torture and death rather than one false word.
Truth is the very light by which the soul seeth God; without it we stumble in darkness.

Wherefore, let thy yea be yea, and thy nay, nay (James 5:12).
The man who liveth in truth liveth already in the courts of heaven, for God is Truth, and in Him is no shadow of turning.

8. Thou Shalt Do No Murder

“Thou shalt not kill” (Exodus 20:13).
From the blood of Abel crying from the ground (Genesis 4:10) to the words of Christ upon the mount, the sacredness of human life, made in the image of God (Genesis 1:27), hath ever been guarded.

• The unborn child, the infirm elder, the enemy in war, the condemned criminal—all bear the imago Dei.
  The Didache (c. 90 AD) and the Letter of Barnabas (c.130 AD) already condemned abortion and infanticide as murder.
  St Basil the Great (†379) and the Council of Ancyra (314) imposed the same penance for abortion as for homicide.
• Even hatred in the heart is incipient murder:
  “Whosoever hateth his brother is a murderer: and ye know that no murderer hath eternal life abiding in him” (1 John 3:15).

Defend the innocent, protect the weak, but never take vengeance into thine own hands, for “Vengeance is mine; I will repay, saith the Lord” (Romans 12:19).

The way of happiness is paved with the preservation of life, not its destruction.

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