snares and intricacies.

For let us reflect and consider: What a presumption is it without
due regard and reverence to lay hold on God's name; with unhallowed
breath to vent and toss that great and glorious, that most holy,
that reverend, that fearful and terrible name of the Lord our God,
the great Creator, the mighty Sovereign, the dreadful Judge of all
the world; that name which all heaven with profoundest submission
doth adore, which the angelical powers, the brightest and purest
Seraphim, without hiding their faces, and reverential horror, cannot
utter or hear; the very thought whereof should strike awe through
our hearts, the mention whereof would make any sober man to tremble?
[Greek], "For how," saith St. Chrysostom, "is it not absurd that a
servant should not dare to call his master by name, or bluntly and
ordinarily to mention him, yet that we slightly and contemptuously
should in our mouth toss about the Lord of angels?

"How is it not absurd, if we have a garment better than the rest,
that we forbear to use it continually, but in the most slight and
common way do wear the name of God?"

How grievous indecency is it, at every turn to summon our Maker, and
call down Almighty God from heaven, to attend our leisure, to vouch
our idle prattle, to second our giddy passions, to concern His
truth, His justice, His power in our trivial affairs!

What a wildness is it, to dally with that judgment upon which the
eternal doom of all creatures dependeth, at which the pillars of
heaven are astonished, which hurled down legions of angels from the
top of heaven and happiness into the bottomless dungeon: the which,
as grievous sinners, of all things we have most reason to dread; and
about which no sober man can otherwise think than did that great
king, the holy psalmist, who said, "My flesh trembleth for Thee, and
I am afraid of Thy judgments!"

How prodigious a madness is it, without any constraint or needful
cause, to incur so horrible a danger, to rush upon a curse; to defy
that vengeance, the least touch of breath whereof can dash us to
nothing, or thrust us down into extreme and endless woe?

Who can express the wretchedness of that folly, which so entangleth
us with inextricable knots, and enchaineth our souls so rashly with
desperate obligations?

Wherefore he that would but a little mind what he doeth when he
dareth to swear, what it is to meddle with the adorable name, the