and, considering who made them, not much amiss; and as kings’ oaths, ’tis not much matter whether they were fish or flesh;—else I say, there is not an oath, or at least a curse amongst them, which has not been copied over and over again out of Ernulphus a thousand times: but, like all other copies, how infinitely short of the force and spirit of the original!—It is thought to be no bad oath⸺and by itself passes very well—“ G⸺d damn you. ”—Set it beside Ernulphus’s ⸺“God Almighty the Father damn you—God the Son damn you—God the Holy Ghost damn you”—you see ’tis nothing.—There is an orientality in his, we cannot rise up to: besides, he is more copious in his invention—possess’d more of the excellencies of a swearer⸺had such a thorough knowledge of the human frame, its membranes, nerves, ligaments, knittings of the joints, and articulations,⸺that when Ernulphus cursed—no part escaped him.—’Tis true there is something of a hardness in his manner⸺and, as in Michelangelo , a want of grace ⸺but then there is such a greatness of gusto !
My father, who generally look’d upon everything in a light very different from all mankind, would, after all, never allow this to be an original.⸺He considered rather, Ernulphus’s anathema, as an institute of swearing, in which, as he suspected, upon the decline of swearing in some milder pontificate, Ernulphus , by order of the succeeding pope, had with great learning and diligence collected together all the laws of it;—for the same reason that Justinian , in the decline of the empire, had ordered his chancellor Tribonian to collect the Roman or civil laws all together into one code or digest⸺lest, through the rust of time⸺and the fatality of all things committed to oral tradition—they should be lost to the world forever.
For this reason my father would ofttimes affirm, there was not an oath, from the great and tremendous oath of William the Conqueror ( By the splendour of God ) down to the lowest oath of a scavenger ( Damn your eyes ) which was not to be found in Ernulphus .—In short, he would add—I defy a man to swear out of it.