Others there are that use to represent, That they swear not but when they are angry; and then (for all our Clamours and Exaggerations) they mean no harm at all.
A. But would you take it for a justification of your Wife’s Adulteries, if she should tell you, That she never prostitutes her self, but when her Fits of Lust tempt her to give that satisfaction to her appetite? Besides, this is but to excuse one fault with another; and with no greater justice, than his that should defend a Bastard’s Crimes, by alledging that his Mother was a Whore; since the Nature as well as the Duty of Virtue being the Moderation of our Passions, it is evident that their excesses degenerate into sins; and therefore how that can be a good excuse that needs one, and how that anger which in it self is sinful, can impart an innocence to productions in their own nature culpable, let those that are concerned determine.
For my part, when I consider the Apostle’s Command, Be ye (Eph. 4. 26) angry, and sin not; I cannot but apprehend, that when our Passions swell into excess, they are indeed contaminated by the Guiltiness of their Productions, but confer not upon them a meritoriousness which themselves want. But why, I pray, in every passionate mood, must you be transported to commit Sins that are as unprofitable as impious; and to deserve your Crosses, by a sawcy Provocation of your God, whom you then endeavour to make your Enemy, when you most need his favour to protect you from disquiets? Why must your Tongue fly in your Maker’s face, and vilify his Sacred Name, because your Dice turn up Size-ace rather than Quatre-trey? For either he is the Guider of those seeming Chances, or meddles not with their disposal: In, this last case you are palpably injurious, to make God the Object of your Choler, when he is not the Cause of it; and in the former case your folly is not inferior, instead of propitiating, to incense that Deity, who is the sole Disposer of those Fortunes we either wish or fear.
But take heed he give you not too much pretence to be so, by displeasing you, (as discreet Mothers whip their froward Children that cry without cause) and punish in his anger these rash and culpable expressions of yours. As for the other branch of the excuse, I mean the harmlessness of your intent; to that I must reply, That our Actions may as well offend as our Intents, if they be subsequent to our knowledge of God’s aversion to what we do. And usually men take it for a sufficient offence, to do what we are sure will disoblige them, tho with a differing design. Nor do we think our selves less injured by Robbers when they strip us, because they offer us that violence, not with intent to anger us, but only to make a Booty of our Purses. ‘Tis a received Maxim in Divinity which Moralists prop with their full concurrence, That no Goodness (much less bare Innocence) of the Intent can justify a formal sinful evil. If then the committing of this sin against the knowledge of the ill you act, be not crime enough to condemn you, you must not be deny’d my Absolution. But withal, I must acquit most sinners in the world upon the self-same score; and believe the threatned Flames of Hell as uninhabited as insupportable; since certainly such sinners (if any such there be) must be prodigious no less for their unequal’d rarity, than devilish perverseness, that are such Monsters as to offend their Maker, merely to offend him. For in Philosophy our Masters teach us, That Ill under that notion cannot be the object of our choice; (that being ever a real, or at least a seeming good); and tho in our misguided elections we oftentimes embrace it, yet that is ever under a contrary notion, and rather by mistake than by design.
But oh! how industrious are sinners to deceive themselves; and how strangely does the Devil fascinate and blind deluded Mortals, when (by such silly and impertinent Excuses) he persuades them rather to expose their judgments to a certain discredit, than let their Souls be ransom’d from an Ignoble Slavery, into a Glorious Freedom; and rather suffer their Abilities to be believed weak, than permit their Lives to be made virtuous. Certainly, such people would make me as much astonish’d as themselves are faulty, if I did not consider this gallant property, of rather making bad Apologies to defend their Sins, than good Resolutions to forsake them, as intail’d upon them by a kind of traduction from our first Parents, who hoped with Fig-leave Aprons, and the faint Shade of Trees, to hide both their Nakedness and their Disobedience from the Omniscient Eye of God himself.
I will not waste Ink upon their successless and impudent defence, that make their Drunkenness an Apology for their Swearing, and make that an excuse for their sin, which is it self a sin above excuse; but with as little justice, as the Keeper of the Lions in the Tower could excuse any particular Tragedy they had acted, by alledging that he had voluntarily let them loose. But since the Tempers that most dispose men to a flux of Oaths, are Drunkenness and Choler, give me leave by the by, to take notice of the chief Midwives that are usually assistant to the birth of Oaths; and to observe, That as the Thunder falls not, but when Heaven is over-cast, so we are pronest to swear, when the Beastliness of our Passions hath either blinded or deposed our Reason.