A Portraiture of Quakerism, Volume 3 | Page 5

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."
"Neither shalt thou swear by thy head, because thou canst not make one hair white or black."
"But let your communication be yea, yea; nay, nay: for whatsoever is more than this cometh of evil."
It is said by those, who oppose the Quakers on this subject, that these words relate, not to civil oaths, but to such as are used by profane persons in the course of their conversation. But the Quakers deny this, because the disciples, as Jews, must have known that profane swearing had been unlawful long before this prohibition of Jesus Christ. They must relate, therefore, to something else, and to something, which had not before been forbidden.
They deny it also on account of the construction of the sentences, and of the meaning of the several words in these. For the words, "Swear not at all," in the second of the verses, which have been quoted, have an immediate reference to the words in the first. Thus they relate to the word "forswear," in the first. But if they relate to the word "forswear," they must relate to perjury, and if to perjury, then to a civil oath, or to an oath, where an appeal is made to God by man, as to something relating to himself. The word oath also is explicitly mentioned in the first of these verses, and mentioned as an oath which had been allowed. Now there was one oath, which had been allowed in ancient time. The Jews had been permitted, in matters of judgment, to swear by the name of God. This permission was given them, for one, among other reasons, that they might be prevented from swearing by the name of those idols by which their neighbours swore; for a solemn appeal to any Heathen god necessarily includes an acknowledgment of the omnipresence of the same.
That they related to this oath in particular, the Quakers conceive to be obvious from the prohibition in the verses which have been cited, of swearing by heaven, by earth, and by other things. The Jews, knowing the sacredness of the name of God, had an awful notion of the consequences of perjury, if committed after an appeal to it, and therefore had recourse to the names of the creatures, in case they should swear falsely. But even the oaths, thus substituted by them, are forbidden by Jesus Christ; and they are forbidden upon this principle, as we find by a subsequent explanation given by St. Matthew, that whosoever swore by these creatures, really and positively swore by