Untitled - Electric Scotland

i849-53] RECOMMENDATIONS 169
highest moral importance. Accordingly,
he drafted a
careful paper for insertion in the Report, protesting
vehemently against the reckless imposition of oaths, in
which the solemnity of the form of invocation contrasted
painfully, and even ludicrously, with their now antiquated
1
and unmeaning substance.
"Why," he asked, "should a man be forced solemnly to call the
Holy Trinity to witness that he will obey statutes which he knows
to be almost entirely abrogated? To require this is surely to
trifle with things most sacred. Any one who reads carefully the
oaths required by some of our College statutes will grant that
they are relics of a barbarous and irreligious state of society, and
these awful denunciations will strongly remind him of the device
by which William of Normandy tried to entrap
unawares the
superstitious conscience of his guest whom he thought neither
promise nor common oath could bind. Some at least of the
College oaths seem to be constructed on this principle of terrify
ing into superstitious obedience those whose consciences were not
to be trusted. . . . These College oaths are often profane ; they
are always liable
and destroy the
to be misunderstood, and they are apt to strain
fineness of the conscience. . . . We earnestly
recommend that the Legislature declare the imposition of such
oaths to be altogether illegal."
A few sentences from the Dean s paper were inserted
by the Commissioners in their Report, 2 but they seem to
have decided that the great question of oaths, religious
tests, and subscription in all its branches, lay outside the
on their
terms of their Commission, and that any attempt
part
to deal with it would divert attention from the
subjects more immediately before them. Dean Tait
accordingly was forced to content himself with embodying
1 As examples of such oaths the Dean instances the obligation in some
Colleges upon a newly elected fellow to swear, "under the pain of anathema
and the wrath of Almighty God, that he will always wear a lilliput (what
ever that may be), and that he will* never walk abroad in the fields without
having another fellow as his companion."
2
Pp. 146, 147.