What is Truth? said jesting Pilate; and would not stay for an answer.
Certainly there be that delight in giddiness; and count it a bondage to
fix a belief; affecting free-will in thinking, as well as in acting. And
though the sects of philosophers of that kind be gone, yet there remain
certain discoursing wits, which are of the same veins, though there be
not so much blood in them as was in those of the ancients. But it is not
only the difficulty and labor which men take in finding out of truth,
nor again, that when it is found it imposeth upon men's thoughts, that
doth bring lies in favor: but a natural though corrupt love of the lie
itself. One of the later school of the Grecians examineth the matter,
and is at a stand to think what should be in it, that men should love
lies, where neither they make for pleasure as with poets, nor for
advantage as with the merchant; but for the lie's sake. But I cannot
tell: this same truth is a naked and open daylight, that doth not show
the masks and mummeries and triumphs of the world half so stately and
daintily as candle-lights. Truth may perhaps come to the price of a
pearl, that showeth best by day; but it will not rise to the price of a
diamond or carbuncle, that showeth best in varied lights. A mixture of a
lie doth ever add pleasure. Doth any man doubt, that if there were taken
out of men's minds vain opinions, flattering hopes, false valuations,
imaginations as one would, and the like, but it would leave the minds
of a number of men poor shrunken things, full of melancholy and
indisposition, and unpleasing to themselves? One of the fathers, in
great severity, called poesy _vinum doemonum,_ because it filleth the
imagination, and yet it is but with the shadow of a lie. But it is not
the lie that passeth through the mind, but the lie that sinketh in and
settleth in it, that doth the hurt; such as we spake of before. But
howsoever these things are thus in men's depraved judgments and
affections, yet truth, which only doth judge itself, teacheth that the
inquiry of truth, which is the love-making or wooing of it, the
knowledge of truth, which is the presence of it, and the belief of
truth, which is the enjoying of it, is the sovereign good of human
nature. The first creature of God, in the works of the days, was the
light of the sense; the last was the light of reason; and his Sabbath
work ever since is the illumination of his Spirit.... The poet that
beautified the sect that was otherwise inferior to the rest, saith yet
excellently well:--"It is a pleasure to stand upon the shore, and to see
ships tossed upon the sea; a pleasure to stand in the window of a
castle, and to see a battle and the adventures thereof below; but no
pleasure is comparable to the standing upon the vantage ground of Truth"
(a hill not to be commanded, and where the air is always clear and
serene). "and to see the errors, and wanderings, and mists, and
tempests, in the vale below:" so always that this prospect be with pity,
and not with swelling or pride. Certainly, it is heaven upon earth, to
have a man's mind move in charity, rest in providence, and turn upon the
poles of truth.
To pass from theological and philosophical truth to the truth of civil
business: it will be acknowledged even by those that practice it not,
that clear and round dealing is the honor of man's nature, and that
mixture of falsehood is like alloy in coin of gold and silver, which may
make the metal work the better, but it embaseth it. For these winding
and crooked courses are the goings of the serpent; which goeth basely
upon the belly, and not upon the feet. There is no vice that doth so
cover a man with shame as to be found false and perfidious; and
therefore Montaigne saith prettily, when he inquired the reason why the
word of the lie should be such a disgrace and such an odious charge.
Saith he, "If it be well weighed, to say that a man lieth, is as much as
to say that he is brave toward God and a coward toward men." For a lie
faces God, and shrinks from man. Surely the wickedness of falsehood and
breach of faith cannot possibly be so highly expressed, as in that it
shall be the last peal to call the judgments of God upon the generations
of men; it being foretold, that when Christ cometh, "he shall not find
faith upon the earth."