[41] “Thou shalt not bear false witness.” This is the ninth of the ten heads but the fourth in number of those on the second table. Numberless are the blessings which it can bring to human life if kept, numberless on the other hand the injuries which it causes if disregarded;
[42] for reprehensible as is the false accuser his guilt is less than that of the bearer of false witness. The former acts as his own champion, the latter as the accomplice of another, and if we compare one bad man with another the iniquity of one who sins for his own sake is less than his who sins for the sake of another.
[43] The judge looks with disfavour on the accuser as a person who cares little for truth in his eagerness to win his case, and this is the reason why introductory addresses are required to secure the attention of the hearer to the speaker. But the judge starts with no lurking feelings of hostility to the witness and therefore he listens with a free judgement and open ears, while the other assumes the mask of good faith and truth, names indeed of the most valuable realities, but the most seductive of names when used as baits to capture something which is earnestly desired.
[44] And therefore in many places of the Law Book he exhorts us not to consent to an unjust man or unjust action, for consent, if not rendered on honest grounds, is an inducement to testify to falsehoods, just as everyone to whom injustice gives a feeling of pain and hostility is a friend of truth.
[45] Now when a single man of bad character invites us to do as he does there is nothing remarkable in a refusal to share his wicked folly, but when a multitude is carried away in a rushing mass as down a steep slope to lawlessness, it needs a noble soul and a spirit trained to manliness to keep from being carried with them.
[46] Some people suppose that what the many think right is lawful and just, though it be the height of lawlessness. But they do not judge well, for it is good to follow nature, and the headlong course of the multitude runs counter to what nature’s leading would have us do.
[47] So if some people collect in groups or crowded assemblages to give trouble, we must not consent to their debasing of the long established and sterling coinage of civic life.
Better than many hands is one wise thought,
A multitude of fools makes folly worse.
[48] But some show such an excess of wickedness that they not only lay to the charge of men things which have never occurred but persisting in their wickedness exalt and extend the falsehood to heaven and bear testimony against the blessed and ever happy nature of God. These are the interpreters of portents and auguries and of sacrificial entrails, and all the other proficients in divination who practise an art which is in reality a corruption of art, a counterfeit of the divine and prophetic possession.
[49] For no pronouncement of a prophet is ever his own; he is an interpreter prompted by Another in all his utterances, when knowing not what he does he is filled with inspiration, as the reason withdraws and surrenders the citadel of the soul to a new visitor and tenant, the Divine Spirit which plays upon the vocal organism and dictates words which clearly express its prophetic message.
[50] Now everyone who pursues the spurious scurvy trade of divination ranks his surmises and conjectures with truth, a position ill-suited to them, and easily gets the unstable of character into his power; then with a mighty counterblast as it were he pushes about and upsets their unballasted barks and prevents them from coming to port in the sure roadsteads of piety. For he thinks he must proclaim the results of his guessing to be not his own discovery but divine oracles, secretly vouchsafed to him alone, and thus confirm the great multitudes which gather around him in their acceptance of the fraud.
[51] Such a person receives from the lawgiver the appropriate name of false prophet, for he adulterates the true prophecy and with his spurious inventions throws the genuine into the shade. But in quite a short time such manoeuvres are exposed, for it is not nature’s way to be concealed for ever but when the right time comes she uses her invincible powers to unveil the beauty which is hers alone.
[52] For as in eclipses of the sun the rays are dimmed for a very short time but soon shine again spreading a light unshadowed and far-reaching, when the sun is not obscured at all by any intervening object but displays its whole surface in clear open sky, just so though some oracle-mongers may ply their false art of divination, masked under the specious name of prophecy, and palm off their ecstatic utterances upon the Godhead, they will easily be detected. Truth will come back and shine again, illuminating the far distance with its radiance, and the lie which overshadowed it will vanish away.
[53] He added another excellent injunction when he forbade them to accept the evidence of a single person, first because the single person may see or hear imperfectly or misunderstand and be deceived, since false opinions are numberless and numberless too the sources from which they spring to attack us.
[54] Secondly because it is most unjust to accept a single witness against more than one or even against one: against more than one, because their number makes them more worthy of credence than the one: against one, because the witness has not got preponderance of number, and equality is incompatible with predominance. For why should the statement of a witness made in accusation of another be accepted in preference to the words of the accused spoken in his own defence? Where there is neither deficiency nor excess it is clearly best to suspend judgement.