needs offend; for it puts the highest affront upon the Holiness and
Righteousness of God, therefore his wrath must sweep them away.
This kind of Swearing is put in with lying, and killing, and
stealing, and committing Adultery; and therefore must not go
unpunished: {32d} For if God will not hold him guiltless that
taketh his Name in vain, which a man may doe when he swears to a
truth, (as I have shewed before,) how can it be imagined, that he
should hold such guiltless, who, by Swearing, will appeal to God,
if Lies be not true, or that swear out of their frantick and Bedlam
madness. It would grieve and provoke a sober man to wrath, if one
should swear to a notorious lye, and avouch that that man would
attest it for a truth; and yet thus do men deal with the holy God:
They tell their Jestings, Tales and Lies, and then swear by God
that they are true. Now this kind of Swearing was as common with
young Badman, as it was to eat when he was an hungred, or to go to
bed when it was night.

Atten. I have often mused in my mind, what it should be that
should make men so common in the use of the sin of Swearing, since
those that be wise, will believe them never the sooner for that.

Wise. It cannot be any thing that is good, you may be sure;
because the thing it self is abominable: {33a} 1. Therefore it
must be from the promptings of the spirit of the Devil within them.
2. Also it flows sometimes from hellish Rage, when the tongue hath
set on fire of Hell even the whole course of nature. {33b} 3. But
commonly Swearing flows from that daring Boldness that biddeth
defiance to the Law that forbids it. 4. Swearers think also that
by their belching of their blasphemous Oaths out of their black and
polluted mouths, they shew themselves the more valiant men: 5.