statements fully agreeing in the main circumstances, and declaring that they saw one another, while seeing him engaged in the crime."[139] _No Oath Required.--An oath, in the modern sense, was never administered to a Hebrew witness._ Testimony was given under the sanction of the Ninth Commandment: "Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbor." This solemn prohibition of bearing false witness was regarded by both Moses and the Talmudists as a sufficient safeguard against perjury. It was a settled maxim of Talmudic law that: "Whosoever will not tell the truth without an oath, would not scruple to assert falsehood with an oath." The doctrine was carried still further by some of the Jewish philosophers who declared that swearing was injurious in itself; and that he who consents to swear should _ipso facto_ be suspected of lacking credibility.[140] In the place of an oath, the following solemn warning or adjuration was administered to each witness in the presence of the entire court: Forget not, O witness, that it is one thing to give evidence in a trial as to money and another in a trial for life. In a money suit, if thy witness-bearing shall do wrong, money may repair that wrong. But in this trial for life, if thou sinnest, the blood of the accused and the blood of his seed to the end of time shall be imputed unto thee.... Therefore was Adam created one man and alone, to teach thee that if any witness shall destroy one soul out of Israel, he is held by the Scripture to be as if he had destroyed the world; and he who saves one such soul to be as if he had saved the world.... For a man from one signet ring may strike off many impressions, and all of them shall be exactly alike. But He, the King of the kings of kings, He the Holy and the Blessed, has struck off from His type of the first man the forms of all men that shall live, yet so that no one human being is wholly alike to any other. Wherefore let us think and believe that the whole world is created for a man such as he whose life hangs on thy words. But these ideas must not deter thee from testifying to what thou actually knowest. Scripture declares: "The witness who hath seen or known, and doth not tell, shall bear his iniquity." Nor must ye scruple about becoming the instrument of the alleged criminal's death. Remember the Scriptural maxim: "In the destruction of the wicked, there is joy."[141] It will be observed that the two elements of this preliminary caution were, first, a solemn warning against injustice to the accused through false swearing and a reminder of the inevitable retribution of Heaven upon the perjured swearer and his remote descendants; second, a pointed admonition against timidity or fear in testifying.