impertinent by the insignificancy of the expression.

After all, how little it becomes a gentleman to debauch his mouth
with foul language, I refer to themselves in a few particulars.

This vicious custom has prevailed upon good manners too far; but yet
there are some degrees to which it has not yet arrived.

As, first, the worst slaves to this folly will neither teach it to
nor approve of it in their children. Some of the most careless will
indeed negatively teach it by not reproving them for it; but sure no
man ever ordered his children to be taught to curse or swear.

2. The grace of swearing has not obtained to be a mode yet among
the women: "God damn ye" does not fit well upon a female tongue; it
seems to be a masculine vice, which the women are not arrived to
yet; and I would only desire those gentlemen who practice it
themselves to hear a woman swear: it has no music at all there, I
am sure; and just as little does it become any gentleman, if he
would suffer himself to be judged by all the laws of sense or good
manners in the world.

It is a senseless, foolish, ridiculous practice; it is a mean to no
manner of end; it is words spoken which signify nothing; it is folly
acted for the sake of folly, which is a thing even the devil himself
don't practice. The devil does evil, we say, but it is for some
design, either to seduce others, or, as some divines say, from a
principle of enmity to his Maker. Men steal for gain, and murder to
gratify their avarice or revenge; whoredoms and ravishments,
adulteries and sodomy, are committed to please a vicious appetite,