_equivocations_
by the words and instances of Christ. Than whose doctrine, which is
an art of deceiving, nothing can be more pestilent. And that, both
because what you do not wish done to yourself, you should not do to
another; now the patrons of equivocations and mental reservations
would not like to be themselves deceived by others, etc.... and also
because St. Augustine, etc.... In truth, as there is no pleasant
living with those whose language we do not understand, and, as St.
Augustine teaches, a man would more readily live with his dog than
with a foreigner, less pleasant certainly is our converse with those
who make use of frauds artificially covered, overreach their hearers
by deceits, address them insidiously, observe the right moment, and
catch at words to their purpose, by which truth is hidden under a
covering; and so on the other hand nothing is sweeter than the
society of those, who both love and speak the naked truth, ...
without their mouth professing one thing and their mind hiding
another, or spreading before it the cover of double words. Nor does
it matter that they colour their lies with the name of _equivocations
or mental reservations_. For Hilary says, 'The sense, not the speech,
makes the crime.'"

Concina allows of what I shall presently call _evasions_, but nothing
beyond, if I understand him; but he is most vehement against mental
reservation of every kind, so I quote him.

Concina

"That mode of speech, which some theologians call pure mental
reservation, others call reservation not simply mental; that language
which to me is lying, to the greater part of recent authors is only
amphibological.... I have discovered that nothing is adduced by more
recent theologians for the lawful use of _amphibologies_ which has
not been made use of already by the ancients, whether philosophers or
some Fathers, in defence of lies. Nor does there seem to me other
difference when I consider their respective grounds, except that the
ancients frankly called those modes of speech lies, and the more
recent writers, not a few of them, call them amphibological,
equivocal, and _material_."

In another place he quotes Caramuel, so I suppose I may do so too,
for the very reason that his theological reputation does not place
him on the side of strictness. Concina says, "Caramuel himself, who
bore away the palm from all others in relaxing the evangelical and
natural law, says:

Caramuel

"I have an innate aversi