ABSTRACT
Article XXXIX of the Church of England, which has remained without change since 1553, is aimed against a tenet of the Anabaptists, which is also condemned in the Reformatio Legum Ecclesiasticarum. There are two passages of the New Testament which have appeared to others besides the Anabaptists to forbid the taking of an oath in any case. They are our Lord’s teaching in the Sermon on the Mount and the very similar words of S. James. These are evidently the passages to which the Article alludes, when it says that we confess that vain and rash swearing is forbidden Christian men by our Lord Jesus Christ, and James His Apostle. And it is tolerably clear that in neither passage is the formal tendering of oaths in a law court under consideration.
