Disputation — Bontempi, Palladium Theologicum V · from Schola Thomistica
Disputation VI: On the Oath
NATURE has so instructed MAN, conscious of his scant fidelity, that, that less distrust be placed in him, he presently compels with an oath the divine truth, being of infallible testimony: And if man would follow this guidance of nature with such fidelity as to fulfill in effect what he promises by his sworn word, nor with that levity would bring his Creator in as witness for however small a thing, he would furnish not so much an argument of another's distrust as a most weighty proof of his own trustworthiness: but as the other dictates of rational creature are drawn astray into byways by that foul crookedness of sin, which bends the mind tending straightly toward God into an excessive love of self, so the invocation of the Divine name for bearing witness (which I shall prove below to be not only licit, but to have its exemplar in God) is implicated, because of the depravity of sin, in various labyrinths of errors; we shall therefore endeavor, throughout this whole disputation in several questions, to extricate it, insofar as it takes on the nature of an OATH.
De Iuramento.
HOMINEM, modicae suae fidei conscium, adeo natura edocuit; ut, quo minus ei diffidatur, mox divinam veritatem, infallibilis quippe testimonii, iuramento compellet: Quod si hunc naturae ductum ea fidelitate sequeretur homo, ut effectu compleret, quod iurato verbo promittit, nec ea levitate pro quantulacumque re Creatorem suum in testem adduceret, non tam alienae diffidentiae, quam propriae fiduciae gravissimum praestaret argumentum: verum sicut caetera rationalis creaturae dictamina in auia distrahit faeda illa peccati curvitas, quae mentem a recta in Deum tendentia in nimiam sui dilectionem deflectit, ita Divini nominis ad testandum invocatio (quam non modo licitam esse, sed et in Deo habere exemplum infra probabo) propter peccati pravitatem variis errorum labyrinthiis implicatur; eam igitur, quatenus Iuramenti naturam induit, tota hac disputatione per plures quaestiones extricare conabimur.
Within this disputation
- Question I: What an oath is, and of how many kinds
- Question II: Whether it is lawful to swear by God
- Question III: Whether it is lawful to swear by creatures
- Question IV: What is required for an oath
- Question V: Whether, and how, it is a sin to swear without truth
- Question VI: Whether an oath made without justice is a sin, and what sin
- Question VII: Whether an oath lacking judgment is a sin, and what sin
- Question VIII: Whether, and how, a custom of swearing is evil
- Question IX: When one who swears incautiously from habit sins mortally
- Question X: What sin it is to swear deceitfully
- Question XI: Whether it is lawful to exact an oath from one who will perjure himself
- Question XII: Whether, and when, it is lawful to exact an oath from an idolater
- Question XIII: On the obligation of a promissory oath in itself
- Question XIV: Whether deceitful oaths bind
- Question XV: Whether an oath extorted by injury, such as an oath to pay usury, binds
- Question XVI: Whether an oath extorted by fear binds
- Question XVII: Whether an oath given through fraud, error, or ignorance is void
- Question XVIII: Whether an incautious promissory oath binds
- Question XIX: Whether an oath confirms contracts that could otherwise be voided
- Question XX: On the ways of removing the obligation of an oath
- Question XXI: On the penalties imposed on perjurers