Truthfulness

10. Truthfulness.

Never speak anything for a truth which you know or believe to be false. Lying is a great sin against God, who gave us a tongue to speak the truth and not falsehood. It is a great offense against humanity itself,—for where there is no regard to truth there can be no safe society between man and man. And it is an injury to the speaker; for besides the disgrace which it brings upon him, it occasions so much baseness of mind that he can scarcely tell truth or avoid lying, even when he has no color of necessity for it; and, in time, he comes to such a pass that, as other people cannot believe he speaks the truth, so he himself scarcely knows when he tells a falsehood.

Sir MatUiew Hale, England, 1G09-1676.