This is another consideration which always serves to lessen or increase the guilt and malignity of any sin. It was some excuse for the drunkenness of _Noah_, and the adultery of _David_, that they committed these crimes but once: as, on the contrary, of the patriarch _Abraham_’s distrust of GOD, that he repeated the dissembling of _Sarah_ to be his wife, two several times. And if this be admitted as an aggravation of other persons crimes, surely much more so of the guilt of common swearing, because it is a sin which may be, and is for the generality often repeated. In many other gross sins it cannot be so: if a man be overcome in drink, there must be a considerable time ere he can recover his debauch, and return to his cups again: or if he be accustomed to profane the sabbath, he cannot do it every day, but only one in seven. But alas! the profane swearer is ready for another oath, almost before the sound of the first is out of our ears: yea, some double and treble them in one sentence, even so as to confound the sense of what they say, by an horrid din of blasphemy! Now if the great and terrible _Jehovah_ has expresly declared that he will not hold him guiltless, that is, will assuredly punish him, that taketh his name but once in vain: what a vast heap of these heinous sins lies at every common swearer’s door! It would be apt to sink him into an intolerable despair, did he but see the whole sum of them. And O what a seared conscience must that wretch have, that does not feel this prodigious weight!
III. But _Thirdly_, what makes the sin of profane swearing appear yet more exceeding sinful, is, that it hardens infidels against the christian religion.
It is the Apostle _Peter_’s advice to the married persons of his time, that they should walk as became the gospel of CHRIST, that those who were without, might be won to embrace the christian religion, by seeing and observing their pious conversation coupled together with fear. And what the Apostle presses on married persons, we find elsewhere enjoined on each particular member of the church. Accordingly we are commanded by our blessed LORD, to “let our light so shine before men, that they may see our good works, and glorify our Father which is in heaven:” And the Apostle _Paul_ bids us “walk circumspectly towards them that are without, redeeming the time;” that is, embracing all opportunities to do them good, “because the days are evil.” But alas! in what a direct contradiction does the profane swearer live to this and such-like precepts, who, instead of gaining proselytes to CHRIST from the unbelieving part of the world, does all he can to oppose it! For how can it be expected, that infidels should honour our GOD, when christians themselves despise him; or that any should embrace our religion, when professors of it themselves make so light of one of its strictest commands? No; to our grief and shame be it spoken, it is by reason of such impieties as these, that our holy religion (the best and purest in itself) is become a by-word among the heathen; that the sacred authority of the holy JESUS and his doctrine is despised; and “GOD’s name (as it is written) blasphemed among the _Gentiles_.”
These cannot but be sad stumbling-blocks and offences in the way of our brethren’s conversion: “But woe be to those men by whom such offences come.” We may say of them, as our blessed LORD did of _Judas_, “it had been better for such men, that they had never been born:” Or, as he threatens in another place, “It shall be more tolerable for _Sodom_ and _Gomorrah_ in the day of judgment, than for such sinners.”