Although your church be opposite
To ours, as Black Friars are to White,
In rule and order, yet I grant
You are a Reformado faint ;
And what the faints do claim as due,
You may pretend a title to :
But faints, whom oaths or vows oblige,
Know little of their privilege;
Farther, I mean, than carrying on
Some felf-advantage of their own:
For if the devil, to ferve his turn,
Can tell truth; why the faints fhould fcorn, When it ferves theirs, to swear and lie,
I think there's little reason why :
Else h' has a greater power than they,
Which 'twere impiety to say.
We're not commanded to forbear,
Indefinitely, at all to fwear;
But to fwear idly, and in vain,
Without felf-interest or gain.
For breaking of an oath and lying,
Is but a kind of self-denying,
A faint-like virtue; and from hence
Some have broke oaths by Providence :
Some, to the glory of the Lord,
Perjur'd themselves, and broke their word:
And this the constant rule and practice
Of all our late apostles' acts is.
Was not the cause at first begun
With perjury, and carried on?
Was there an oath the godly took,
But in due time and place they broke ?
Did we not bring our oaths in first,
Before our plate, to have them burst,
And caft in fitter models, for
The present use of church and war ?
Did not our worthies of the house,
Before they broke the peace, break vows? 150
For having freed us first from both
Th' alleg'ance and fuprem'cy oath ;
Did they not next compel the nation
To take, and break the protestation ?
To fwear, and after to recant,
The folemn league and covenant ?
To take th' engagement, and difclaim it,
Enforc'd by those who first did frame it?
Did they not swear, at first, to fight
For the king's fafety, and his right?
And after march'd to find him out,
And charg'd him home with horse and foot? And yet still had the confidence.
To fwear it was in his defence?
Did they not fwear to live and die
With Effex, and straight laid him by?
If that were all, for fome have fwore
As falfe as they, if th' did no more.
Did they not fwear to maintain law,
In which that fwearing made a flaw?
For protestant religion vow,
That did that vowing disallow?
For privilege of parliament,
In which that fwearing made a rent?
And fince, of all the three, not one
Is left in being, 'tis well known.
Did not they swear, in express words,
To prop and back the house of lords?
And after turn'd out the whole houfe-full
Of peers, as dang’rous and unuseful.
So Cromwell, with deep oaths and vows,
Swore all the commons out o' th' houfe;
Vow'd that the red-coats would difband,
Ay, marry wou'd they, at their command;
And troll'd them on, and fwore and fwore,
Till th' army turn'd them out of door.
This tells us plainly what they thought,
That oaths and fwearing go for nought;
And that by them th' were only meant
To ferve for an expedient.
What was the public faith found out for,
But to flur men of what they fought for?
The public faith, which ev'ry one
Is bound t' observe, yet kept by none;
And if that go for nothing, why
Should private faith have such a tie?
Oaths were not purpos'd more than law,
To keep the good and just in awe,
But to confine the bad and finful,
Like mortal cattle in a pinfold.
A faint's of th' heav'nly realm a peer ;
And as no peer is bound to fwear,
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