will be loosed, they will prove unserviceable to public use.

If oaths generally become cheap and vile, what will that of
allegiance signify? If men are wont to play with swearing anywhere,
can we expect they should be serious and strict therein at the bar
or in the church. Will they regard God's testimony, or dread His
judgment, in one place, or at one time, when everywhere upon any,
upon no occasion they dare to confront and contemn them? Who then
will be the more trusted for swearing? What satisfaction will any
man have from it? The rifeness of this practice, as it is the sign,
so it will be the cause of a general diffidence among man.

Incredible therefore is the mischief which this vain practice will
bring in to the public; depriving princes of their best security,
exposing the estates of private men to uncertainty, shaking all the
confidence men can have in the faith of one another.

For which detriments accruing from this abuse to the public every
vain swearer is responsible; and he would do well to consider that
he will never be able to make reparation for them. And the public
is much concerned that this enormity be retrenched.


IV. Let us consider, that rash and vain swearing is very apt often
to bring the practiser of it into that most horrible sin of perjury.
For "false swearing," as the Hebrew wise man saith, "naturally
springeth out of much swearing:" and, "he," saith St. Chrysostom,
"that sweareth continually, both willingly and unwillingly, both
ignorantly and knowingly, both in earnest and in sport, being often
transported by anger and many other things, will frequently