"If men are wont to play with swearing anywhere, can we expect they should be serious and strict therein at the bar or in the church"
About this Quote
Barrow comes at profanity the way a mathematician comes at an axiom: treat it casually in one place and you corrupt the whole system. The line is structured as a trap disguised as a polite question. If men are “wont” to toy with swearing “anywhere” - in taverns, on the street, in the home - why would they suddenly become “serious and strict” when language is supposed to carry maximum moral or legal weight, at the bar or in the church? The genius is in the mundane psychology: habits don’t respect architecture. A courtroom’s oak paneling can’t magically rehabilitate a tongue trained on trivial oaths.
The subtext is less about isolated words than about credibility. In Barrow’s England, oaths weren’t just spicy vocabulary; they were social technology. Swearing could invoke God, stake honor, and bind testimony. When that currency inflates through constant casual use, you don’t just offend piety; you weaken the machinery that makes promises, contracts, and confessions believable. Barrow is warning that a culture that laughs off verbal irreverence ends up with institutions that can’t enforce verbal seriousness.
Context sharpens the edge: a 17th-century world of religious fracture, civil conflict memory, and intense anxiety about public morality. Barrow, a clergyman as well as a mathematician, sounds like he’s policing manners, but he’s really defending the connective tissue of trust. The line isn’t prudish so much as infrastructural: if speech becomes unserious everywhere, the places that depend on solemn speech become theater.
The subtext is less about isolated words than about credibility. In Barrow’s England, oaths weren’t just spicy vocabulary; they were social technology. Swearing could invoke God, stake honor, and bind testimony. When that currency inflates through constant casual use, you don’t just offend piety; you weaken the machinery that makes promises, contracts, and confessions believable. Barrow is warning that a culture that laughs off verbal irreverence ends up with institutions that can’t enforce verbal seriousness.
Context sharpens the edge: a 17th-century world of religious fracture, civil conflict memory, and intense anxiety about public morality. Barrow, a clergyman as well as a mathematician, sounds like he’s policing manners, but he’s really defending the connective tissue of trust. The line isn’t prudish so much as infrastructural: if speech becomes unserious everywhere, the places that depend on solemn speech become theater.
Quote Details
| Topic | Respect |
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