name; but I have no wish to please him. Were I in the presence of an earthly monarch, I could take heed to my words, and put a bridle on my tongue ; but, though I know that God both sees and hears me, I regard him no more than if he did not exist. It is true, he declares, that, " if I take his name in vain, he will not hold me guiltless ;" but " my lips are my own: who is he, that he should be Lord over me^?" Let him say what he will, or do what he will, I am determined to have my own way, and to set him at defiance.'
Once more I ask, what must that habit be, which betrays such a disposition as this ?]
2. In their tendency —
[Satan, " the god of this world," is ever " working in all the children of disobedience." As he put it into the hearts of Ananias and Sapphira to lie, so he puts it into the hearts of ungodly men to swear. By this he has several objects to accomplish.
By this he hopes, first, to eradicate truth and virtue from the loorld. When he has prevailed on men so to cast off the fear of God as to take his name in vain, he will easily instigate them to any thing else. Having alread}^ lowered their estimate of truth, he will soon lead them to overstep the bounds of truth, and occasionally to confirm their falsehoods also with oaths. Indeed he stirs up men to confirm with oaths that which is doubtful, more frequently than that which is true ; and consequently to perjure themselves, without being at all aware what guilt they are contracting : and could he influence all, as he does the great mass of those who are under his dominion, there would be no longer any truth or virtue to be found. He was a liar from the beginning ; and he would take care that all his children should be known by their resemblance to him"".
By this too he hopes, in the next place, to bring God himself into contempt. How ardently he desires to attain this object, we need not say : but this is clear, that the means he uses to attain it are admirably adapted to the end proposed. Tell a person who is accustomed to swear, that God is displeased with him ; and you make no more impression on him than if he had never heard of such a Being. Tell him that he shall be fined a few shillings, and he is all alive to the subject : but if you speak of " the judgments of God, he puffs at them" with perfect contempt". Nor is it in the speaker only that these effects are produced : the hearers of such conversation gradually lose their abhorrence of the sin, and their tender conceni for the honour of their God : and the more this insensibility is diffused, the more does Satan exult and triumph.
' Ps. xii. 4. m John viii. 44. » Ps. x. 5.
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