not your Garments Joel 2. 13. Who hath required these things at your hands Isa 1. 11 12 13. viz. in this hypocritical fashion These seeming Negatives are not absolutely but comparatively spoken to such a degree of love or care or fear reverence and duty as are due to Gods great Commands and chief Designs which must be the main biass of mens affections and obediential actions as most intent to moralitie and not to content themselves with emptie formalities So in Ironical assentings or seeming concessions which are the sharpest prohibitions and reproches as Fill ye up then the measure of your Fathers He that is filthy let him be filthy still and he that is unjust be unjust still These are not spoken in a flat and plain way but in such a dialect and emphasis of familiar Oratory as the times and country did well understand to signifie other then the words sounded either more or less And it had been a very ridiculous childishness to have urged the Letter in its syllabical appearance and against its rational meaning which as S. Austin long ago observed must never be so put upon the biass of the bare words as to sway or swerve them contrary to that Divine Verity Morality and Sanctity which shines most clearly in other places and whose light must be brought to enlighten those that are more involved and obscured by reason of some proper phrase or idiotisme of expressing things after the manner of men in those times Else many things spoken even of God and by God himself and holy men after the manner of men as seeing hearing smelling being injured angry and repenting c. will be as blasphemies and irreconcilable as both Jewish Rabbins and Christian Doctors observe to his essential Attributes and immutable Perfections Here the words look to the appearance as when Angels are called young men Mark 16. 5. Joh. 20. 12. Luk. 24. 4. but the sense must look to the essence and reality Men will make as mad work of Scripture as Hogs will do with Gardens and Fields when in stead of orderly plowing and sowing that we may reap a fair and fruitful Harvest we inordinately and rashly root up all things by a confused rudeness which ends either in barrenness or in briars and thorns endless janglings and perplexities What long and sad contentions have the Papists made in the Western Churches the last 300. years by rigidly urging those words of Consecration in the Lords Supper to a literal severity making the Bread after Consecration so much Christs Body substantially and not sacramentally which all good Christians believe that there remains no more natural substance of the Bread but only under the accidents of Bread the sole and entire substance of Christs Body the same which is at once in Heaven and in every place where this Sacrament is celebrated yea in every crum of it By which Superseraphick opinion Faith must not only forsake the senses and look above them but flatly deny and contradict them in every verdict which they give of their proper objects according to experience and right Reason which are a part of the Creators light to mankind And all this by a magisterial novel and seraphick severity beyond the judgement of the ancient Churches is imposed by pressing the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 rigid Letter of the words in that part of the blessed Sacrament and allowing no Metonymy or Symbolical speaking which is so frequent in Scripture-Mysteries and sacred correspondencies between the signs and things signified as the Lamb is called the Passeover and Christ our Passeover and the Rock Vine Dove c. While yet in the other part of the same Sacrament they are forced to subdue and soften the words to their due sense by such Metonymues and Tropes as must make the Cup to signifie or mean the Wine and the Cup or Wine to signifie the New Testament in Christs Blood Certainly as in such expressions which Christ there useth and which we read in other Scriptures of parallel sense to set forth Divine Mysteries by their adapted Signs and Symbols or Emblems and Seals there must be believed something more sublime in them then the narrowness of the words or perhaps the hearts of men in this world can fully comprehend so to be sure nothing is by Scripture imposed upon us to be believed which is flatly contradictive to right Reason and the suffrages of all our senses and to the Analogy of Faith in the Scriptures But here the meaning of the words must be measured by semblable places and like expressions which are not wanting in the Scriptures and yet are not so wrested by any Christians that are Masters of Sense Reason and true Religion who do not cease by believing to be rational Creatures or to be men by being Christians If the Quakers will fairly admit such Cautions and limitations as they do to other places in the interpreting these Scriptures which they chiefly alledge to justifie their denial of all Swearing whatever I shall not doubt to reconcile them to my sense of them nor shall I grudge to give them this second commendation for their due regard to Scripture as the sure and sufficient rule of a Christians actions for the main and substance of them But these Scriptures must be duly examined exactly weighed and aptly reduced to that standard of Truth which is most constant and clear in both Morals Fiducials Thirdly Yea I shall adde a third Commendation of these Quakers who shall rise in judgement at the last day against many of those that speak much against them for this That they seem to have so great a fear of an Oath that out of a jealousie of Swearing amiss they will not swear at all Although they are superstitious in the degree of their fear which I shall prove to be not justly grounded on the words they alledge yet no good man can blame them to have as God commands a just abhorrence of the sin of profane easie trivial familiar false and inconsiderate Swearing for which the Land mourneth Jer. 23. 10. which so disposeth men as Saint Austin sayes to false Swearing and gross Perjury which are sins of the first magnitude Nor can indeed much credit be given any more then to a Lyar to any man that swears never so solemnly and in Judicature who is a common Swearer and hath no reverence either of the Majesty of God or the sacredness of an Oath I formerly observed the great dread and just horror of all Swearing even that which the Laws required wherewith the poor Quakers might easily be scared and possessed in those barbarous times of their first breeding when so many lawful Oaths were despised and impudently violated nay when Perjury and Rebellion were adopted to the Family of Religion and voted for Reformation when men were grown so preposterously zealous for God that they would both lye and forswear to advance his Interest
A DISCOURSE Concerning Publick Oaths AND The Lawfulness of SWEARING in Judicial Proceedings Written by Dr. GAUDEN Bishop of EXETER In order to answer the scruples of the QUAKERS 1 Cor. 13. 2. Without charity I am nothing 2 Tim. 2. 25. In meekness instructing those that oppose Ne putemus in verbis Scripturarum esse Evangelium sed in sensu non in superficie sed medulla non in Sermonis cortice sed in rationis radice Hieronym in Ep. ad Gal. LONDON Printed for R. Royston Book-seller to the Kings most Excellent Majesty at the Angel in Ivy-lane 1662. To the truly Honourable ROBERT BOYLE Esquire Son to the Earl of Cork c. SIR SUch as have the happiness to know you need no more then the mention of your Name to put them in mind of your merit upon man-kind whose learned industrious and pious accomplishments have as with the greatest modesty and civility so with the least austerity or reproach given the Nobility Gentry yea and Clergy too of these three Kingdomes at once to see in your studious and vertuous example the best way of proportioning their lives and manners to the eminency of their Names and Stations thereby to preserve or redeem themselves from that Civil war and sad captivity to which idleness fermented by inordinate passions or vain and vicious affections is prone to expose not only their estates healths and honours but their religion consciences and soules while men of Noble birth good breeding ingenious parts and generous estates do miserably debauch their Dignity and squander away those noble advantages they have above other men to do well and worthily As if one should cut out goodly Timber-trees into Loggs or Chips and instead of stately Pillars or Beams make only Bed-staves or Cat-sticks or Tooth-picks of them So degenerating from all true sense of honour becoming Gentlemen and Christians as to glory in their shame I mean their sin and folly and to be ashamed of their true glory which is to be as rationall and religious as they can be in this state of mortality Your Nobleness will excuse me if I venture to offend you by telling the world what I have many years longed to do how high a value I have for you of whom I have so pleasing and complete a prospect not more for your rare endowments of Nature and Art then for your rarer Ornaments of Grace and Vertue while you neither superciliously fancy Learning to be any diminution to your Noble Birth nor yet Piety to be any disparagement to your great Learning I must not now in my maturer years compare you to our so famous Sir Philip Sidney whom I heretofore valued very much nor do I yet undervalue him because I think you have out-vied his Eloquent Valour and Heroick Romances with greater Essayes and more useful Atchievements both in Philosophy and Divinity The more retired and solid grounds of the first Philosophy you are daily searching and discovering with your generous Associates by accurate and real Experiments which are the Anatomies of Nature and the Keyes to her Cabinets opening a Door to the true prospect as of the causes so of the virtues operations and efficacies of things and by them to the Creators glory which is much eclipsed by that occult conjectural and sceptical Philosophy which is rather imaginary then real a parturiency without birth a meet abortion as to knowledge indeed a kind of Legerdemaine in Learning and Sophistry rather then Science verified by Experience The fountains also of the second that is Divinity your selfe have lately cleared in vindicating by your Pen the Sacred yet unaffected style of the Scriptures with a most Eloquent and Learned Zeal against some mens profane and Atheistical cavils who are so wittily wicked as to disdain even salvation it selfe in that plain but sure way which the wisdom of God sees fittest for humane capacities whereas few I believe of those curious Gallants would be so foolishly morose as to refuse a faire Estate which were setled upon them in the ordinary legal way of Deeds because it is not conveyed to them in such oratorious Harangues and flourishes of speech as they most fancy I have dedicated this little Piece to your great Name because it covets a resemblance to yea and hath an emulation of your candor and humanity toward all persons that are not wholly profligate in their opinions or desperate in their actions The design of this Tract is to correspond as much as I may with your principles and genius who have the happiness to render the severest vertues amiable and to confute the grossest Errors with the gentlest Truths I confess both in Religion or Charity and in reason of State or Policy I am not for inflicting at first dash sharp Penalties on seduced or simple people meerly upon the account of their Opinions modestly dissenting in some lesser things from the Religion or Laws established yet without any rude blaspheming or opposing them as to the main of Faith Morality and Civil subjection until such rational and charitable means have been used to convince them of their errors as may at once discharge those duties of Humanity and Charity which we owe to all men specially to our Country-men and fellow-Christians The Cudgel and Sword Prisons and Banishments Plunderings and Sequestrations were the late cruel and flagellant Methods of our most tyrannous times which had nothing of Reason Law or Religion to support them but these are not in my judgment either the first or the fittest means to confute the falsities of mens private opinions or to rectifie the obliquities of their inconform but innocent actions flowing from them upon the account of Conscience and plea of Religion Although it may be as just as necessary to repress by legal coercions and penalties those petulant obstinacies which do resist all softer applications and endanger the publick tranquillity by giving affronts to settled Religion or obstructions to the proceedings of Justice by established Laws I am indeed for cuncta prius tentanda those Divine Essayes and Appeals first which render men most unexcusable quid amplius poteram what could I have done more c. using lenitives before lancings fomentations before incisions or amputations until there be no other remedy then rigor and severity to some parts becomes the greatest Charity to the whole where not the scratch of a petty opinion but the gangrene of an obstinate and rebellious humor forceth the abscission of one part to prevent a deadly contagion to others yea to the whole Body Not that I think it any Religion to have an indifferency to that true Religion which is once established by publick consent and Law as best and fittest for the Nation nor is it any part of Mercy alwayes to suffer publick Justice to be baffled by the refractoriness of any persons or parties No I am far from a tame permitting Tares to be openly scattered by the bold and evil hands of any men who seek as enemies
a Christian may swear vainly and rashly by a spontaneous and occasional easiness either promising or asserting although it be a truth and by the true God but without reverence to God and in matters of so little yea no importance or difficulty as neither deserve nor need nor require an Oath To this we all agree with the Quakers Christs words condemning all such profane and trivial swearing much more if it be in fraud and falsitie which makes such Oaths as the Coyn of an Usurper which is false metal and stamp too a complicated sin and one of the strongest chains of darkness which the Devil and a mans own lusts hamper the Soule withal 2. Not is it any question whether Christians may swear in any case by any Creature as such not relating by it and through it to God above all who is the Alpha and Omega the center and circumference of all things from whom they have their being and in whom is the Idea or Prototype of all their perfections To terminate an Oath in a Creature is to put the stamp of Divinity on it to make it an Idol in Gods stead and to profane his holy name by swearing by it as by a false God The swearing by any Creature as such we all own to be a great sin according to those instances which our Lord Christ and Saint Iames from his mouth give us when they explain their meaning of Swear not at all c. 3. Nor is it a question whether an Oath made by the name of any Creature and in a thing lawful may yet be broken or whether it be a sin to swear falsly by them All agree that though the Oath be rash as by a Creature yet it binds in things lawful no less at least to truth and justice then any simple promise and it may be something more Here that is true Fieri non debuit factum valet Like Bastards they should not have been begot but they must be kept unless the matter be sinful as Herod's Oath was which beheaded Iohn Baptist Mat. 14. 9. 4. But the question is Whether those words of Christ and the Apostle do utterly forbid all Swearing in any case whatsoever to all Christians so that by the Law of Christ it is a sin to swear as in private so in publick transactions or any Courts of Judicature be the matter of the Oath never so just and true and the manner of it never so solemn and sacred and the Authority requiring them never so lawful in civil respects This the Quakers affirm led thereto as they profess meerly by the Conscience of that obedience they oweto Christ whose will they say is expresly declared in those words to all his Disciples Not to swear at all in no case at no time upon no mans command Nor do they argue any thing further by way of rational deduction moral grounds or religious principles either from the nature of an Oath or from the consent of other Scriptures or from the Divine Attributes and glory but barely insist upon the words and urge the 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 〈◊〉 Letter as an absolute or universal Negative without any limitation or dispensation So feeding on the rinde or shell of the Letter and gnawing the bone of the bare words that they never come at the kernel and marrow or true meaning of them On the other side I do deny in the behalf of my own Conscience and the consentient sense of this Church and Kingdome yea of all Christian and Reformed Churches of any renown That all swearing is forbidden by those words of Christ and his Apostle But that our Saviours words are to be understood with such a limited sense and strict interpretation as suited to his scope and design which was to rectifie popular errors and remove common abuses in Swearing but not wholly to forbid the use of it in a religious and lawful way And because it is not sufficient in order to my design which is to justifie the legal proceedings of this Kingdoms Iustice by Oaths and to satisfie the scruples of the Quakers to oppose my Nay to their Yea or to offer the husk and chaff of words void of such Reasons as either slow from the nature of all things and all actions as good or evil morally or from the will of God revealed in the Scriptures which is a Treasury of right Reason as well as a Rule of true Religion I will endeavour to give those Reasons which induce me to believe that the Quakers as Christ said to the Saducees do erre not knowing or not right understanding the mind of Christ in those Scriptures which is not to forbid all Swearing nor such as the just and religious Laws of England do require of all under its subjection in some cases I will not seek to oppress or confound the Quakers with the shew of many Reasons as if I would carry the cause by number and not by weight but content my self with those few which are most pregnant plaine and easie to be understood by them 1. Reason From the occasion of Christs and the Apostles words and the scope or end of them to which his own instances by way of explication of his meaning do best direct us both as to what he forbids and enjoynes to some of which the Quakers themselves do consent 2. Reason From the moral and religious nature end and use of Oaths which God had instituted and approved without any repeal by Christ or his Apostles 3. Reason From other places of the New Testament which give light to these both by principles granted and suitable examples expressed To these Reasons I will add by way of full measure heaped up and running over the concurrent judgement of other Christians and Churches ancient and modern in their interpretation of these words with answer to the Allegations made from the sayings and manners of some Primitive Christians This done the conclusion will easily follow with great clearness and good authority to all that are truely wise and have their eyes opened and senses exercised to discerne good and evil The first Reason is from the occasion scope and end of our Saviours words and so of the Apostles For these as the biass of all speech do best discover the speakers mind there being no surer way to wrest and pervert Scriptures then to take them abruptly and absolutely when they have a relative comparative or limited sense in the aim and purpose of the speaker Our blessed Saviour in this Divine Sermon on the Mount of which Saint Matthew gives us so large an account makes it his main aim and scope first to set forth those spiritual heavenly and eternal blessings which beyond those sensible earthly and temporary ones which were so much of old set before the Jews to invite them to obedience of Gods Laws were now to be chiefly regarded by Christians as their peculiar comforts hopes and rewards under the Gospel
they excused from perjury or false-swearing in those cases if in assertory Oaths they sware falsly or in promissory either not intending to perform what they so sware or not after performing them so far as was in their power But the Yea and Nay the Affirmative or Negative of such swearing in word ought to be also Yea and Nay in the purpose and performance And although they ought not so to swear yet having so sworn they were obliged to the moral ends of an Oath which is to make it good in Truth and Faith Agreeable to the same end and scope and almost in the same words Saint Iames writes to the dispersed Christian Iewes who still retained that evil Custome of ordinary Swearing by the Creatures as Heaven and Earth and other such like Oathes without any conscience of the manner or matter or making good in effect such Oaths The meaning therefore of both places as the learned Grotius and others observe is no more then to take away the ordinary abuse of such swearing but not that right use which God had allowed and commanded in his word Nor is there more implied in these words as to the subject matter then in those where God complains that because of Swearing the land mourns Hos 4.2 3. that is by unlawful Oaths and the curse shall come into the house of the Swearer Zach. 5.4 that is such as use idle false and forbidden Swearing Zach. 8.17 Not those who swear as they might do by the name of the Lord in righteousness judgement and truth which God no where reproves As if one should inveigh against drinking and feasting and singing and danoing and dalliance there where the usual viot excess and wantonness of any people had generally run these things to an inordinacy which doth no way condemn the sober modest and seasonable use of them That this thus limited sense of Christs words against the abuse of Swearing so familiar among the Iewes was Christs meaning in the negative part of his words appears by the affirmative part of them which the Quakers themselves will I suppose confess must not be taken in an exclusive latitude or such a broad universality of command as enjoynes us to use no other words in any communication by way of affirming or denying any thing but only Yea Yea and Nay Nay Which words the Quakers so much affect to use as if they would fancy themselves literally or verbally tied to those Monosyllables and those to be repeated in all their assertions or promises yet none of them in case of more full declaring their assent or dissent upon any matter do seruple to use such paraphrases or enlargements of speech as the matter or the parties understanding or diffidence may require For if they would keep all their communication to those precise words Yea Yea Nay Nay they would be no less obstructive to civil and private conversation then they seek to be to judicial proceedings by their refusing at all to swear Doubtless our Saviours own larger expressing of himselfe in many cases by such periphrases or commentaries of words as amount to affirmations or negations besides and beyond the bare terms of Yea Yea and Nay Nay do abundantly justifie together with the practise of all the Apostles that these proverbial Phrases or Epitomes of speech here commanded under the words of Yea and Nay do only import that plainness or simplicity of Christians meaning and doing as may be consonant to their words in truth and honesty without fraud or falsity in common speech not at all forbidding either more ample expressions of their sense in private converses nor yet forbidding such religious and judicious use of Swearing in great and publick matters as are necessary to carry on humane affairs with iustice and Peace but only such false frivolous and fraudulent Oaths as for the matter manner and meaning are by the Law of God by all right Reason and Religion prohibited and which then were so familiarly used and abused by the Iewes upon those presumptions and dispensations which they had taken up As then the affirmative part of Christs words are not to be understood literally as a confining of all Christians communication to Yea and Nay but only to that truth and honesty of mind intent and action which Christ aimes at and beyond which whatever is of fraud and falsity is from evil in mens hearts so as to the negation of swearing not at all it cannot in Reason or Religion be extended further then that swearing which is from evil and tends to evil not that which is from good and tends to good namely the veneration of God and love of Truth and Iustice which are not from the evil one the Devil nor from evil principles in men nor for evil designs As for that absolute and universal Negative which they urge from the words of Christ of not swearing at all nothing is more clear and usual in Scripture then to confine the meaning of such Generals to the particular subject and scope intended as I formerly shewed in many instances out of the holy Scriptures but yet further to clear this truth from the most short and exact way of the Scripture-style which is in the commands of the Decalogue In the second Command we are forbidden to make to our selves any graven Image or similitude of Creatures in the way of Worship or Religion yet we read that Moses in the Tabernacle made the Cherubins so did Solomon several Images of Flowers and Beasts in the Temple and for his Throne and without sinne So in the fourth Command All manner of work is forbidden on the Sabbath day yet the intent is only against ordinary works of our civil callings not against works of Religion or decency or charity or necessity against which the Pharisaical rigor and severity had stretched the Letter of the Law beyond the meaning as our Saviour convinceth them Mat. 12. Mark 2. 27. Luk. 14. 3. In the sixth Command Thou shalt not kill the putting men to death in just and legal wayes or in self-defense is not forbidden but only as to private revenge and malice So the tenth Command Thou shalt not covet any thing that is thy Neighbours is to be understood only of an evil and injurious coveting of what is our Neighbours but not of such a desire as is commensurate to Justice and Charity which desires in honest wayes of buying or exchanging to get those things which our want requires and our Neighbours sufficiency willingly affords us Else we must always want but never wish or fairly endeavour for supply by those wayes of commutative justice which by mutual necessities invite men to society Such commodious Interpretations of Scriptures are as necessary to attain their true meaning as the contrary wrestings of them upon a bare Letter are pernicious to all Reason Justice and true Religion and indeed contrary to the very word