ate, and faithful in the discharge of his
official duties. Yet what effect has this vast amount of swearing, if it
be not to make perjury so familiar an offence as to be no longer deemed
disgraceful? Not a bribe is taken by a member of Congress, not a contract
surreptitiously obtained by a municipal official, not an appointment made
to the known detriment of the public on personal or party grounds, without
the commission of a crime, in theory transcendentally heinous, in practice
constantly condoned and ignored. Nor can we be mistaken in regarding the
sacrilege and virtual blasphemy resulting from the institution of
judicial, assertory, and promissory oaths, as holding no secondary place
among the causes of the moral decline and corruption of which we witness
so manifest tokens.

To one who does not carry foregone conclusions of his own to the
interpretation of the New Testament, it can hardly appear otherwise than
certain that the Founder of Christianity intended to prohibit all oaths.
His precept, "Swear not at all," occurs in a series of specifications of
maxims drawn from the standard morality of his day, under each of which he
sets aside the existing ethical rule, and substitutes for it one covering
precisely the same ground, and conformed to the intrinsic right as
represented in his own spirit and life. "Ye have heard that it hath been
said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth; but I say unto you, that
ye resist not evil." "Ye have heard that it hath been said, Thou shalt
love thy neighbor, and hate thine enemy; but I say unto you, Love your
enemies." The analogy of these and other declarations of the same series
compels us to believe that when Jesus said, "Ye have heard that it hath
been said by them of old time, Thou shalt not forswear thyself, but shalt
perform unto the Lord thine oaths," the precept which followed, "I say
unto you, Swear not at all," must have applied to the same subject-matter
with the maxim which precedes it,--that Jesus must have intended to
disallow something that had been previously permitted. If so, not trivial
or profane oaths alone, but oaths made in good faith and with due
solemnity must have been included in the precept, "Swear not at all."(13)
It is historically certain that the primitive Christians thus understood
the evangelic precept. They not only refused the usual idolatrous forms of
adjuration, but maintained that all oaths had been forbidden by their
Divine Lawgiver; no