Of kin to this is their Apology who plead, That if they do not swear, their words shall neither be fear’d nor obey’d by their very Servants; mens ears being of late so accustomed unto Oaths, that they are necessary to make them think we are in earnest. This is the usual Objection of the French, amongst whom this Vice is grown so Epidemical (as of Blackness amongst the Ethiopians) its commonness has removed all the deformities they would otherwise find in it.
Answ. But sure there are ways enough to make your servants obey your Commands, without your breaking God’s. Gravity and Severity, not using them to hear you swear, are courses likelier far than Oaths to reach that end: Which if they yet should fail of, they would turn this fancied inconvenience into an advantage of necessitating you to the election of Religious Servants. Certainly, since the sole universality of Vice has drawn upon us this suppos’d necessity, a general and unanimous desertion of it must needs be the properest expedient for its removal. And, believe me, ‘tis but an extravagant way of teaching our Inferiors to pay us their duties, to teach them to disobey the Commands of their Superiors by our own example, and to lead them the way to despise the Injunctions of the most Ador’d Powers, to whom we confess to owe an exquisite Obedience, upon the highest Considerations.
But admitting (as the dispersedness of this Vice too often forces us) the supposal of this Plea to be true, yet will the Inference prove consequent? For by the same reason the Thief might justify the unreclaimedness in his Robberies, by alledging if he forsake that Trade, his Purse must soon grow empty: Or the Buona Roba excuse her Prostitutions, by saying, That unless she continue her former Profession of Wantonness, she shall no more be presented with New Gowns, and Linnen richly lac’d, nor be able any longer to maintain her wonted Riots; her Conversion (by forbidding her to be the Cherisher of her Gallants loose Excesses) depriving her of the only fewel of her Bravery. Upon how few could we with justice press Religious Duties, if such petty Inconveniences attending their performance, were a warrantable dispensation or disengagement from it? Surely he that requires that we should pull (Mat. 5. 29, 3) out our right eyes, and cut off our right hands, if they oppose our entrance in at the streight Gate, will scarce give them admittance, that will not purchase it by the parting with such trivial Conveniences. It is much less unreasonable that you should be neither believed nor obeyed with readiness, than that God should either not be believed when he speaks, or not obeyed when he commands. For take this for a Truth, to which Oracles are Fables, That never any man commits a sin to shun an inconvenience, but one way or other, soon or late, he plunges himself by that act into a far worse inconveniency, than that he would decline.