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fore it be yet too late; that we may be able from our hearts, to join in the triumphant song of the text, The Lord is king: the earth may be glad thereof; yea, the multitude of the ifles (and our own in particular) may be glad thereof.

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BUT I SAY UNTO YOU, SWEAR NOT AT ALL.

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I DESIGN, in the following difcourfe, to fhew you the great wickedness of common fwearing. I shall endeavour, as far as I can, to deter the young finner from forming habits of this vice; and, if it be in my power, to reclaim the old one. I fhall first, therefore, fhew you the wickedness of common fwearing; and, fecondly, I fhall exhort those who practise it to lay it afide,

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THE firft argument against the wickednefs of common fwearing may be taken from its tendency to perjury, by making a folemn oath received with less reverence.

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An oath reverently taken in a court of justice, and upon a folemn occafion, is in fact an act of religion. It is an appeal to the great God of heaven, whom we call upon to be witness of the truth of what we are going to say. It is an acknowledgment, therefore, that we believe God knows our hearts, and will punish our falsehood, And in this light if is, that the Apoftle tells us, An oath for confirmation puts an end to all ftrife, It is making our laft appeal to God Almightywe can make no farther appeal. And indeed. an oath has been in all governments, heathen as well as chriftian, confidered as the ftricteft bond - by which a man can poffibly be tied, and the beft. fecurity which we can give to those with whom we may have any important dealings.—If a folemn oath then be acknowledged an act of religion, common fwearing may well be reckoned an act of impiety, because it manifeftly tends to make a folemn oath cheap and contemptible.You must all fee, without farther reasoning, that the more a man tifes himself to fwearing, the lefs reverence he will have for an oath. He who makes fwearing a part of his ordinary converfation, will hardly, I fhould think, pay

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any reverence to an oath, on the most awful occafion. I have heard of people who have ac customed themselves to take medicines till medicine had no effect upon them.

Thus common fwearing has a tendency to make you think too lightly of oaths, and fo leads to perjury.-But it has a tendency to perjury in a still more direct way. The common swearer, I suppose, hardly knows when he swears; and must undoubtedly, in the course of his converfation, fwear to many a falfehood. Does any of you believe it poffible, that a common swearer is always fo guarded as to weigh deliberately every oath he takes? and that he performs every action to which he binds himself by his rafh oaths? I fear not: he has gotten fuch a habit of fwearing, that his oaths burft, in a manner, involuntarily from him. I have myself often heard people fwear to the truth of things which I knew were falfe; and fo, I fuppofe, have you. And is it not a dreadful confideration, think you, that a man is thus daily heaping up perjuries upon his head? When you swear fwear you will 'do a thing, you bind yourself to the performance of it by the most facred of all obligations. If the thing you have fworn to be unlawful, you are certainly

certainly not bound: but to whatever mischiev ous inconvenience your oath may lead you, you must certainly discharge it, or be guilty of perjury. This was the cafe of the wicked Herod, when for his oath's fake he murdered John the Baptist. We ought, in these cafes, to repent of the first fin, but not to make it worse by adding another to it.

And, think you, is the common fwearer always fo guarded? does he never, think you, fwear to do a thing, which he neither does, nor intends to do? If he does not, he is certainly more cautious than common fwearers ufually are.-You may fay, perhaps, that you were but in jest that you did not intend to perform the thing you fwore to. You may say so, if you please; but you may as well pretend to fay, that you committed a murder or a highway robbery in jeft: the thing itself is forbidden; and if you trans grefs the commandments of God, it fignifies very little whether you tranfgrefs them with a laughing face, or a ferious one.

But though fwearing may not have this bad confequence, of leading us into perjury, yet in itfelf it is a very wicked practice, from its being direaly oppofite to the commands of our blessed Saviour.

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