My first Advice shall be, Seriously to consider, that Swearing is a Sin, and such a Sin too, as not its Nature, but its Commoness only, makes men count little: For if we may judge of the greatness of the Crime, by that of the Vengeance Heaven inflicteth on it, certainly God has divers times so severely punish’d obdurate and incorrigible Swearers, that were his Judgments on them as divulg’d as they have been terrible, that crying Sin would (possibly) be almost as unfrequent as it ought to be. Nor will the seeming harmlessness of that act do more than make a parallel betwixt your fate, and that fond Wretches (mention’d in the Book of Numbers) (Numb. 15. 32) that provok’d stoning, for gathering a few sticks on the Sabbathday. For tho Almighty God (whose Will is the exactest Rule of Good and Ill) should forbid actions otherwise Innocent, yet his Prohibition divests them from that property: And (as the preceding Verses of that Passage alledg’d of Numbers intimate) makes you liable to a just Punishment, tho not for the act, yet for the disobedience. And consonantly we find, that tho the killing of so horrid and Parricidicial a Murderer as Cain, might seem an (Gen. 4. 15) Act of Justice, yet God by his prohibition having render’d it a sin, annexes a Sevenfold Vengeance to the Breach of that Command.
Nay, tho the rebuilding of a ruin’d City be in it self not only innocent, but highly conducing to the publick good; yet God (to shew the Independency of his Justice) having forbidden the reedification (Josh. 6. 26) of Jericho’s raz’d Walls, punish’d the Transgression of that (1 Kings 16. 34) Prophetick Order, in the very Children of the Transgressor. An Example of Severity very observable, being not, that I know of, to be parallel’d. Consider not therefore so much (in your Swearing) the little harm you do, as the great God you offend. False Coinage is as well Felony in Farthings, as in Half Crowns, or Twenty-Shilling-Pieces. And as careful Mothers soundlier whip their Children for eating sowre Crabs, and such Green Trash, than ripe and goodly Fruit; so often are those sins most severely dealt with, which bring us least advantage; nor is it a Prodigy, to see men get most stripes for those offences they get least by.
It is an easy matter in trivial things to transgress heinously. What Trifle could appear slighter than the eating of an Apple? Yet this petty seeming Peccadillo lost Adam Paradise, and us a Title to it: God’s Interdict enabling the Core of that Forbidden Fruit to choak his Immortality, and his Posterity’s hopes of it upon earth. But I purposely decline all Instances of this nature, not only in pursuance of my intended Brevity, but because ‘tis much nobler and more handsom for you to owe your Repentance to your Reason, than to your Apprehension.
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