,
and to which there is no imaginable temptation in nature?

"If it be an accomplishment, it is such an one as the meanest person may
make himself master of; requiring neither rank nor fortune, neither
genius nor learning.

"But if it be no test of wit, we must allow, perhaps, that it wears the
appearance of valour. Alas! what is the appearance of anything? The
little birds perch upon the image of an eagle.

"True bravery is sedate and inoffensive: if it refuse to submit to
insults, it offers none; begins no disputes, enters into no needless
quarrels; is above the little, troublesome ambition to be distinguished
every moment; it hears in silence, and replies with modesty; fearing no
enemy, and making none; and is as much ashamed of insolence as
cowardice."

The swearer may ask, "Where is the evil of an oath when it is used for
the support of truth?" If your character is good, the person with whom
you converse will require no oath. He will depend upon the simple and
bare declaration of the matter: and if you swear, it will take a
per-centage from your character in his estimation, and he will not
believe the statement any the sooner for the oath connected with it. Can
you think that the high and holy name of God is intended to be debased
by association with every trivial and impertinent truth which may be
uttered? "No oath," says Bishop Hopkins, "is in itself simply good, and
voluntarily to be used; but only as medicines are, in case of necessity.
But to use it ordinarily and indifferently, without being constrained by
any cogent necessity, or called to it by any lawful authority, is such a
sin as wears off all reverence and dread of the Great God: and we have
very great cause to suspect that where His name is so much upon the
tongue, there His fear is but little in the heart."

Again, the same author says, "Though thou swearest that which is true;
yet customary swearing to truths will insensibly bring thee to swear
falsehoods. For, when once thou art habituated to it, an oath will be
more ready to thee than a truth; and so when thou rashly boltest out
somewhat that is either doubtful or false, thou wilt seal it up and
confirm it with an oath, before thou hast had time to consider what
thou hast said or what thou art swearing: for those who accustom
themselves to this vice lose the observation of it in the frequency;
and, if you reprove them for swearing, they will be ready to swear
again, that they did not swear. A