Our Saint used to say that to equivocate was, in his opinion, to canonize
lying, and that simplicity was, after all, the best kind of shrewdness. The
children of darkness, he said, use cunning and artifice in their dealings
with one another, but the children of God should take for their motto the
words: He that walketh sincerely walketh confidently.
Duplicity, simulation, insincerity always betray a low mind. If, in the
language of the wise man, _the lips that lie kill the soul_, what can be
the effect of the conversation of one who habitually speaks with a _double
heart_?[1]
[Footnote 1: Psalm xii. 3.]