P. 243. Concl. 5. An offered Oath is not to be taken with a reluctant or doubting conscience: 1. Because what is not of faith is sin. 2. Because we must swear in judgment, which he doth not that sweareth against his consciences Judgment. 3. Because this is done for some temporal commodity, or to avoid some loss, or obtain some gain, or to get some mans favour, or such like: But how unworthy of a Christian is it, to set God behind the World, Heaven behind Earth, the Soul behind the Body, eternal joy behind temporal gain, the hope of the life to come behind present ease, inward peace behind outward! 4. Because he that so sweareth evidently exposeth himself to the danger of Perjury (a most heinous sin.) For he that for hope or fear of any temporal commodity or discommodity can be induced to swear that which he ought not, it is scarce credible but he may by the like hope or fear be drawn from doing what he swore. And PERJURY was by the very heathens accounted one of those most heinous sins, which they believed would bring the wrath of the Gods not only on the guilty, but on their posterity, yea on whole nations, much more is it to be feared of us, who worship that one true God, who hath solemnly professed that he will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Lest, while which way ever we look we see such a great and luxuriant crop of Oaths and Perjury even already white to the Harvest, God the most righteous judge should quickly put in the sickle, utterly to cut down so perfidious and profane a nation. We have long felt that our most merciful ⟨p. 336⟩Father is angry, and that the infinite patience of God is turned into fury, being infinitely wronged, and (if I may so say) overcome. It is not easy to say, for which sins this chiefly is, when all sins are very great. But verily he that will seriously think, since God hath begun to scourge us by a nearer rod, how we have not grieved for these grievous sins of swearing and perjury, yea how greatly on one side is increased, the unbridled and unpunished licence of swearing and blaspheming, and on the other side the soul hypocrisy of forswearing on pretence of religion; it can scarce be, but that of Jeremiah will come into his mind, Because of Oaths the land mourneth.
P. 243. Concl. 5. An offered Oath is not to be taken with a reluctant or doubting conscience: 1. Because what is not of faith is sin. 2. Because we must swear in judgment, which he doth not that sweareth against his consciences Judgment. 3. Because this is done for some temporal commodity, or to avoid some loss, or obtain some gain, or to get some mans favour, or such like: But how unworthy of a Christian is it, to set God behind the World, Heaven behind Earth, the Soul behind the Body, eternal joy behind temporal gain, the hope of the life to come behind present ease, inward peace behind outward! 4. Because he that so sweareth evidently exposeth himself to the danger of Perjury (a most heinous sin.) For he that for hope or fear of any temporal commodity or discommodity can be induced to swear that which he ought not, it is scarce credible but he may by the like hope or fear be drawn from doing what he swore. And PERJURY was by the very heathens accounted one of those most heinous sins, which they believed would bring the wrath of the Gods not only on the guilty, but on their posterity, yea on whole nations, much more is it to be feared of us, who worship that one true God, who hath solemnly professed that he will not hold him guiltless that taketh his name in vain. Lest, while which way ever we look we see such a great and luxuriant crop of Oaths and Perjury even already white to the Harvest, God the most righteous judge should quickly put in the sickle, utterly to cut down so perfidious and profane a nation. We have long felt that our most merciful ⟨p. 336⟩Father is angry, and that the infinite patience of God is turned into fury, being infinitely wronged, and (if I may so say) overcome. It is not easy to say, for which sins this chiefly is, when all sins are very great. But verily he that will seriously think, since God hath begun to scourge us by a neerer rod, how we have not grieved for these grievous sins of swearing and perjury, yea how greatly on one side is increased, the unbridled and unpunished licence of swearing and blaspheming, and on the other side the soul hypocrisie of forswearing on pretence of religion; it can scarce be, but that of Jeremy will come into his mind, Because of Oaths the land mourneth.
