Offend the laws, and go at large:
But though ’tis hard the crime to fix,
We know they’re guilty by their tricks.
Reflection.
An honest man’s word is as good as his oath; and so is a rogue’s too; for he that will cheat and lie, why should he scruple to forswear himself? Is the latter more criminal than either of the former? An honest man needs no oath to oblige him; and a rogue only deceives you the more certainly by it, because you think you have tied him up, and he is sure you have not. In truth, it is not easy, with the eye of reason, to discern, that there is any good in swearing at all. We need not scruple to take an honest man’s bare asseveration; and we shall do wrong if we believe a rogue, though he swears by the most solemn oaths that can be invented.
There are, besides, a sort of people who are rogues, and yet don’t know that they are such; who, when they have taken an oath, make a scruple of breaking it, but rack their invention to evade it by some equivocation or other; by which, if they can but satisfy their acquaintance, and serve their own scheme they think all is well, and never once consider the black and heinous guilt which must attend such a behaviour. They solemnly call the supreme Being to witness; to what? to a sham, an evasion, a lie. Thus these unthinking, prevaricating wretches, at the same time that they believe there is a God, act as if there were none; or, which is worse, dare affront him in the highest degree. They who by swearing would clear themselves of a crime, of which they are really guilty, need not be at much pains about wording their oath; for, express themselves how they will, they are sure to be forsworn.
