A69235:44
A treatise against lying Wherein is showed what it is, the nature and causes…A treatise against lying Wherein is shevved vvhat it is, the nature and causes…
A treatise against lying Wherein is showed what it is, the nature and causes of this sin, the divers kinds of it; and that all of them are sinful, and unlawful, with the motives and means to preserve us from it, or to cure us of it. By John Downame, B. of D. and preacher of Gods Word.A treatise against lying Wherein is shevved vvhat it is, the nature and causes of this sinne, the divers kindes of it; and that all of them are sinfull, and unlawfull, with the motives and meanes to preserve us from it, or to cure us of it. By John Dovvname, B. of D. and preacher of Gods Word.
London: printed by Felix Kyngston for Nicolas Bourne, 1636
Title page typeset from the transcription.
A TREATISE AGAINST THE SIN OF LYING. › Chapter 3A TREATISE AGAINST THE SINNE OF LYING. › Chapter 3
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
CHAP. III.
Of divers sorts and forms of speech which are to be acquitted from the censure of a Lye.
Of divers sorts and formes of speach which are to bee acquitted from the censure of a Lye.
And these are the things which always 1concur in every Lye, whereby it appeareth that divers forms of speaking which are suspected and accused as lies, are acquitted and cleared hereof at the Bar, before the seat of Justice, by a right sentence of true judgement, as namely hyperbolical speeches, fables, parables and ironies. In all which though there be not the same spoken which is meant, punctually and literally, yet the same in the sense and intention of the speaker, in whom there is no will to lye or speak contrary to the truth with a love and delight in falsehood, but a divers expression of the same truth conceived in the mind, in other words and phrases than are ordinary, namely such as are tropical, metaphorical, parabolical and hyperbolical, not only for the greater elegance, but also for the more profit of the hearer; and not to blind him with untruths, or deceive him with lies; but rather the better to convince him of the truth, and to move him to embrace it with greater profit and delight. As first for hyperboles or hyperbolical speeches which is the raising of things to their highest pitch, and the enlarging of them above all due proportion, ⟨p. 27⟩not to deceive, (for then some measure should be observed to make the thing probable and credible) but to express the conceits of the mind in an extraordinary loftiness of speech, not only to delight the hearer, but for the more full informing of him of the truth for his greater profit. As also when we give to things senseless or inanimate motion and life, yea sometimes the use of reason. Of the former are such speeches as ascribe a kind of infiniteness to things finite; as when speaking of a multitude, we say commonly that they are innumerable like the sands of the Sea, of long lasting things, that they are everlasting and without end; of those that are of great quantity or capacity, that they are immense and above all measure. And such phrases are used in the Scriptures, as that the Benjamites were so cunning in the use of their slings,