But if it be true, that truth existed before the invention of oaths, and that truth would still be spoken, even if all oaths were abolished, then the Quakers say, that oaths are not so necessary as some have imagined, because they have but a secondary effect in the production of the truth. This conclusion they consider also as the result of reason. For good men will speak truth without an oath, and bad men will hardly be influenced by one. And where oaths are regarded, it is probable that truth is forced out of men, not so much, because they consider them as solemn appeals to God, as that they consider the penalties, which will follow their violation; so that a simple affirmation, under the same pains and penalties, would be equally productive of the truth.
The Quakers consider oaths again as very injurious to morality. For first, they conceive it to be great presumption in men to summon God as a witness in their trilling and earthly concerns.
They believe, secondly, that, if men accustom themselves to call upon God on civil occasions, they render his name so familiar to them, that they are likely to lose the reverence due to it, or so to blend religious with secular considerations, that they become in danger of losing sight of the dignity, solemnity, and awfulness of devotion. And it is not an unusual remark, that persons, most accustomed to oaths, are the most likely to perjury. A custom-house oath has become proverbial in our own country. I do not mean by this to accuse mercantile men in particular, but to state it as a received opinion, that, where men make solemn things familiar, there is a danger of their moral degradation. Hence the Quakers consider the common administration of oaths to have a tendency that is injurious to the moral interests of men.
This notion relative to the bad tendency of oaths, the Quakers state to have prevailed even in the Gentile world. As Heathen philosophy became pure, it branded the system of swearing as pernicious to morals. It was the practice of the Persians to give each other their right hand as a token of their speaking the truth. He, who gave his hand deceitfully, was accounted more detestable than if he had sworn the Scythians, in their conference with Alexander the Great, addressed him thus: "Think not that the Scythians confirm their friendship by an oath. They swear by keeping their word." The Phrygians were wholly against oaths. They neither took them themselves, nor required them of others. Among the proverbs of the Arabs, this was a celebrated one, "Never swear, but let thy word be yes or no." So religious was Hercules, says Plutarch, that he never swore but once. Clinias, a Greek philosopher, and a scholar of Pythagoras, is said to have dreaded an oath so much, that, when by swearing he could have escaped a fine of three talents, he chose rather to pay the money than do it, though he was to have sworn nothing but the truth. Indeed, throughout all Greece, the system of swearing was considered as of the most immoral tendency, the very word, which signified "perjured," in the Greek language, meaning, when analysed, "he that adds oath to oath," or "the taker of many oaths."
But, above all, the Quakers consider oaths as unlawful for Christians, having been positively forbidden by Jesus Christ.
The words, in which they conceived this prohibition to have been contained, they take from the sermon on the Mount.
[3] "Again, ye have heard, that it hath been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shall perform unto the Lord thine oaths."
[Footnote 3: Matt. v. 33.]
"But I say unto you, swear not at all, neither by heaven, because it is
God's throne."
"Nor by the earth, for it is his footstool: neither by Jerusalem, for it is the city of the great King."