Peter, Cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, Letter to the Faithful, 1178 CE

Peter, Cardinal of St. Chrysogonus, Letter to the Faithful

From the Letter to the faithful, 1178 CE. (Epistle 3). On the excommunication of Bernard Raymond and Raymond of Baimac.

Source: Robert I. Moore. The birth of popular heresy, p 115-116. University of Toronto Press, Reprint 1995. 

However Righteous their previous confession, which had seemed to be enough for salvation if they had believed it in their heart of hearts, they were men of twisted minds and dishonest intentions. They did not want to relinquish their heresy when on the surface some authority or other seemed to support their slothful and foolish minds, on the pretext of the words which, according to the Gospel, the Lord said, 'Do not swear at all. Let your speech be: Yea, yea, and No, no.' They claimed that this  meant that they ought not to swear, though the Lord himself is recorded as having sworn, for it is written "The Lord hath sworn" etc. and elsewhere, "I have sworn by myself saith the Lord." Again, the Apostle says, "an oath for confirmation is the end of all their controversy.' Those who read the holy scriptures will find many other passages like this which permit us, because of their fickleness, to swear to anyone whom we wish to persuade. but, like the fools they were, these men did not understand the scriptures, and fell into the trap which they themselves had laid. Although they held swearing to be a dreadful thing, forbidden by the Lord, they were convicted of swearing in their own statement of confession. When they said, 'in the truth which is God we believe this, and declare that it is our faith.' thy did not realize that to adduce the truth and word of God in support of their assertion was undoubtedly to swear, as the Apostle said when he wrote, "this we say unto you in the word of the Lord, and God is my witness," and similar things which anyone who reads and understands the holy scriptures can easily find.