Note 76 — Chapter V

Since these remarks were written, the author has found in Mr. Williams’ “Hireling Ministry none of Christ’s,” an “Appendix as touching oaths, a query.” This Appendix is as follows: “Although it be lawful (in case) for Christians to invocate the name of the Most High in swearing; yet since it is a part of his holy worship, and therefore proper unto such as are his true worshippers in spirit and in truth; and persons may as well be forced unto any part of the worship of God as unto this, since it ought not to be used but most solemnly, and in solemn and weighty cases, and (ordinarily) in such as are not otherwise determinable; since it is the voice of the two great lawgivers from God, Moses and Christ Jesus, that in the mouth of two or three witnesses (not swearing) every word shall stand: Whether the enforcing of oaths and spiritual covenants upon a nation, promiscuously, and the constant enforcing of all persons to practise the worship in the most trivial and common cases in all courts (together with the ceremonies of book and holding up the hand, &c.) be not a prostituting of the holy name of the Most High to every unclean lip, and that on slight occasions, and a taking of it by millions, and so many millions of times in vain, and whether it be not a provoking of the eyes of his jealousy who hath said, that he will not hold him (what him or them soever) guiltless, that taketh his name in vain.” It seems, from this paragraph, that he considered taking an oath to be an act of worship; that a Christian might take one on proper occasions, though not for trivial causes; that an irreligious man could not sincerely perform this act of worship; and that no man ought to be forced to perform this act, any more than any other act of worship. His own practice was agreeable to his theory. He says, in his George Fox digged out of his Burrowes, (Appendix, pp. 59, 60) “cases have befallen myself in the Chancery in England, &c. of the loss of great sums, which I chose to bear, through the Lord’s help, rather than yield to the formality (then and still in use) in God’s worship, [alluding, perhaps, to the use of a book, holding up the hand, &c.] though I offered to swear, in weighty cases, by the name of God, as in the presence of God, and to attest or call God to witness; and the judges told me they would rest in my testimony and way of swearing, but they could not dispense with me without an act of Parliament.”