OATH, an affirmation or promise, accompanied with an invocation of God to witness what we say, and with an imprecation of his vengeance, or a renunciation of his grace, if what we affirm be false, or what we promise be not performed. The word is a corruption of the Saxon coth ; and in England it is often called a corporal oath, because, in the days of Catholicism, the person was sworn upon the host or corpus Christi.

The laws of all civilized states have required the security of an oath for evidence given in a court of justice, and on other occasions of high importance; but the Quakers andf ’ some other sects refuse to swear on any occasion, even at the requisition of a magistrate, and in a court of justice. The text of Scripture upon which the Quakers principally rest their argument for the unlawfulness of all swearing, is our Saviour’s prohibition, “I say unto you, swear not at all.” But it is only in ordinary conversation, and by no means in courts of justice, that Christ prohibits his followers from swearing at all. There is no evidence whatever, that swearing by heaven, by the earth, by Jerusalem, or by their own heads, was the form of a judicial oath in use amongst the Jews. On the contrary, we are told by Maimonides, that “if any man swear by heaven or [7:16:316]by earth, yet this is not an oath ;” which, surely, he could not have said had such been the forms of judicial swearing. Indeed the Jews could not have admitted such forms into their courts without expressly violating the law of Moses, who commands them to “Fear Jehovah their God, to serve him, and to swear by his name.” But the Jews, as every one knows, had such a reverence for the name of Jehovah, that they would not pronounce it on slight occasions, and therefore could not swear by that name in common conversation. Hence, to gratify their propensity to common swearing, they invented such oaths as, by heaven, by earth, by Jerusalem, by the life of thy head, and such like, and by this contrivance they thought to avoid the guilt of profaning the name of Jehovah. These, however, being appeals to insensible objects, either had no meaning, or were in fact, as our Saviour justly argues, oaths by that God whose creatures they were; so that the Jew who swore them was still guilty of profaneness towards the very Jehovah whose name his superstition would not permit him to pronounce. But what puts it beyond all doubt that the use of judicial oaths is not wholly prohibited in the gospel, is the conduct of our Saviour himself, as well as that of his apostle St Paul. When Jesus was simply asked by the high priests, what it was which certain false witnesses testified against him, we are told by the evangelists, that “he held his peace ;” but being adjured by the living God to declare whether he was the Christ, the Son of God, or not, he immediately answered the high priest, without objecting to the oath (for such it was) upon which he was examined. St Paul, in his Epistle to the Romans, says, “ God is my witness, that, without ceasing, I make mention of you in my prayers ;” and to the Corinthians, still more strongly, “I call God for a record upon my soul, that, to spare you, I came not as yet to Corinth.” Both these expressions are of the nature of oaths; and the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews speaks of the custom of swearing judicially without any mark of censure or disapprobation: “Men verily swear by the greater; and an oath, for confirmation, is to them an end of all strife.”

But although a nation has an undoubted right to require the security of an oath upon occasions of real importance, it is something worse than bad policy to multiply oaths, and to hold out to the people temptations to perjure themselves. The security which an oath affords depends entirely upon the reverence which attaches to it in the mind of him by whom it is given; but that reverence is much weakened by the frequency of oaths, and by the careless manner in which they are too often administered. Paley observes, with truth, that “the levity and frequency with which oaths are administered, has brought about a general inadvertency to the obligation of them, which, both in a religious and political view, is much to be lamented; and it merits,” continues he, “public consideration, whether the requiring of oaths on so many frivolous occasions, especially in the customs, and in the qualification for petty offices, has any other effect than to make them cheap in the minds of the people. A pound of tea cannot travel regularly from the ship to the consumer without costing half a dozen oaths at least; and the same security for the due discharge of his office, namely, that of an oath, is required from a churchwarden and an archbishop, from a petty constable and the chief justice of England. Let the law continue its own sanctions if they be thought requisite, but let it spare the solemnity of an oath; and where it is necessary, from the want of something better to depend upon, to accept a man’s bwn word or own account, let it annex to prevarication penalties proportioned to the public consequence of the offence.”

Besides the frequency of oaths, we have mentioned the irreverent manner in which they are too often administered as one of the causes which make them cheap in the esti mation of the people. In this view, the form of the oath, and the ceremonies with which it is required to be taken, are of considerable importance. “The forms of oaths in Christian countries,” says Palcy, “are very different; but in none, I believe, worse contrived, either to convey the meaning or to impress the obligation of an oath, than in England.” Oaths are either assertory or promissory. Assertory oaths are required both to confirm our veracity in evidence, and to give security to the public, that we believe certain propositions conceived to be of public importance. An oath in evidence binds the juror to declare what he knows to be true, and nothing but what he knows to be true. An oath required to assure the public of our belief in the truth of any proposition cannot, without the guilt of perjury, be taken by any man, who, at the time of swearing, has the slightest doubt in his mind whether the proposition be really true. Such an oath, however, though it unquestionably requires the sincerity of the juror’s belief at the time when it is given, cannot oblige him to continue in that belief as long as he may live; for belief is not in any man’s power, being the necessary consequence of evidence, which compels the assent of the mind, according as it appears to preponderate on the one side or on the other. No man, therefore, can be justly accused of perjury for holding opinions contrary to those which he may formerly have sworn to believe; because his belief at the time of emitting his oath may have been the necessary result of the evidence which then appeared before him, and his change of opinion may have resulted with the same necessity from superior evidence which had been since then thrown into the opposite scale, and made it preponderate. On this account we cannot help thinking that all assertory oaths, excepting such as are necessary to confirm testimony respecting facts, ought either to be abolished, or expressed with great caution. Of truths intuitively certain, or capable of rigid demonstration, no man of common sense can entertain a doubt; and therefore the public never requires from individuals the solemnity of an oath as an assurance of their believing such truths. But with respect to the truth of propositions which admit of nothing superior to moral evidence upon either side, a man of the most steady virtue may think differently at different periods of his life; and in such cases, the effect of an oath, if it have any effect, can only be either to shut the man’s eyes against the light, or to make his integrity be causelessly questioned by those who may observe his change of belief.

Promissory oaths cannot, without the guilt of perjury, be given by him who, at the time of swearing, knows that it will not be in his power to fulfil the promise, or who does not seriously intend to fulfil it. A promissory oath cannot, without great guilt, be given by any man, who at the time of swearing believes the object of the promise to be in itself unlawful; for if he seriously mean to fulfil his oath, he calls upon Almighty God to witness his intention to commit a crime. Promissory oaths give to the public greater security than a simple promise; because the juror having the thoughts of God and of religion more upon his mind at the one time than .at the other, offends with a higher hand, and in more open contempt of the divine power, knowledge, and justice, when he violates an oath, than when he breaks a simple promise. Yet it is certain that promissory oaths, though more solemn and sacred, cannot be binding when the promise without an oathwould not be so, though in an inferior degree.