5. But is it _light_ swearing only, (inexcusable as that is) because of which our _land mourneth_? May it not also be said of us, _Though they say the Lord liveth, surely they swear_ falsely? Yea to such a degree, that there is hardly the like, in any nation under heaven; that almost every corner of the land is filled with wilful deliberate _perjury_. I speak not now of the perjuries which every common swearer cannot but run into day by day. (And indeed common “swearing notoriously contributes to the growth of perjury. For oaths are little minded when common use has sullied them, and every minutes repetition has made them cheap and vulgar.”) Nor of those which are continually committed and often detected in our open courts of justice. Only with regard to the latter I must remark, that they are a natural consequence, of that monstrous, shocking manner, wherein oaths are usually administered therein: without any decency or seriousness at all; much less with that awful solemnity, which a rational Heathen would expect, in an immediate appeal to the great God of heaven. I had once designed to consider all the oaths which are customarily taken by any set of men among us. But I soon found this was a work too weighty for me: so almost _in infinitum_ are oaths multiplied in _England_: I suppose to a degree which is not known in any other nation in _Europe_. What I now propose is, to instance only in a few, (but those not of small importance) and to shew, how amazingly little regard is had, to what is solemnly promised or affirmed before God. 6. This is done, in part, to my hands by a late author. So far as he goes, I shall little more than transcribe his words. (Mr. _Disney_’s First Essay, page 30.)