"It is," saith St. Basil, "a very foul and silly thing for a man to
accuse himself as unworthy of belief, and to proffer an oath for
security."

By so doing a man doth authorise others to distrust him; for it can
be no wrong to distrust him who doth not pretend to be a credible
person, or that his saying alone may safely be taken: who, by
suspecting that others are not satisfied with his simple assertion,
implieth a reason known to himself for it.

It rendereth whatever he saith to be in reason suspicious, as
discovering him void of conscience and discretion; for he that
flatly against the rules of duty and reason will swear vainly, what
can engage him to speak truly? He that is so loose in so clear and
so considerable a point of obedience to God, how can he be supposed
staunch in regard to any other? "It being," as Aristotle hath it,
"the part of the same men to do ill things, and not to regard
forswearing." It will at least constrain any man to suspect all his
discourse of vanity and unadvisedness, seeing he plainly hath no
care to bridle his tongue from so gross an offence.

It is strange, therefore, that any man of honour or honesty should
not scorn, by such a practice, to shake his own credit, or to
detract from the validity of his word; which should stand firm on
itself, and not want any attestation to support it. It is a
privilege of honourable persons that they are excused from swearing,
and that their verbum honoris passeth in lieu of an oath: is it not
then strange, that when others dispense with them, they should not
dispense with themselves, but voluntarily degrade themselves, and
with sin forfeit so noble a privilege?

X. To excuse these faults, the swearer will be forced to confess
that his oaths are no more than waste and insignificant words,
deprecating being taken for serious, or to be understood that he
meaneth anything by them, but only that he useth them as expletive
phrases, [Greek], to plump his speech, and fill up sentences. But
such pleas do no more than suggest other faults of swearing, and
good arguments against it; its impertinence, its abuse of speech,
its disgracing the practiser of it in point of judgment and
capacity. For so it is, oaths as they commonly pass are mere
excrescences of speech, which do nothing but encumber and deform it;
they so embellish discourse, as a wen or a scab do beautify a face,
as a patch or a spot do adorn a garme