word "forswear," in the first. But if they relate to the word
"forswear," they must relate to perjury, and if to perjury, then to a
civil oath, or to an oath, where an appeal is made to God by man, as to
something relating to himself. The word oath also is explicitly
mentioned in the first of these verses, and mentioned as an oath which
had been allowed. Now there was one oath, which had been allowed in
ancient time. The Jews had been permitted, in matters of judgment, to
swear by the name of God. This permission was given them, for one, among
other reasons, that they might be prevented from swearing by the name of
those idols by which their neighbours swore; for a solemn appeal to any
Heathen god necessarily includes an acknowledgment of the omnipresence
of the same.

That they related to this oath in particular, the Quakers conceive to be
obvious from the prohibition in the verses which have been cited, of
swearing by heaven, by earth, and by other things. The Jews, knowing the
sacredness of the name of God, had an awful notion of the consequences
of perjury, if committed after an appeal to it, and therefore had
recourse to the names of the creatures, in case they should swear
falsely. But even the oaths, thus substituted by them, are forbidden by
Jesus Christ; and they are forbidden upon this principle, as we find by
a subsequent explanation given by St. Matthew, that whosoever swore by
these creatures, really and positively swore by the name of God. But if
they are forbidden, because swearing by these creatures is the same
thing as swearing by God who made them, then the oath "by the name of
God," which had been permitted to the Jews of old, was intended by Jesus
Christ to be discontinued, or to have no place in his new religion.

The Quakers then, considering the words in question to have the meaning
now annexed to them, give the following larger explanation of what was