ART. 68.] OFFICIAL OATHS. 471

Baltimore, shall severally take and subscribe the oath pre-
scribed by the Constitution, before the Judges of their respective
courts.

5. All corporation officers, except the Mayor or chief magis-
trate, shall take such oath as may be prescribed by law or
ordinance, before the Mayor or chief magistrate of the corpo-
ration.

6. All other officers elected or appointed to any office of trust
or profit under the Constitution and laws of this State, including
the Mayors or other chief magistrates of municipal corporations,
shall take and subscribe the said oath, in the city of Baltimore
before the clerk of the Superior Court, and in the several coun-
ties before the clerk of the Circuit Court, or before one of the
sworn deputies of such clerks.

7. The said clerks shall each procure and keep in his office a
well bound book, to be called the test book, in which shall be
printed or conspicuously written the oaths aforesaid, and every
person taking or subscribing the same shall annex to his signa-
ture the title of the office to which he shall have been elected or
appointed, and the date of his signature.

8. It shall only be necessary for an officer who is required to
take and subscribe the oath prescribed by the fourth section of
the first article of the Constitution, to declare orally at the time,
his belief in the Christian religion, or if he profess to be a Jew,
of his belief in a future state of rewards and punishments, and
it shall be presumed that an officer who has taken and subscribed
the oath made at the same time such declaration of belief.

9. The oath to be administered to a person who has an appoint-
ment which requires him to take an oath, but who is not em-
braced in the provisions of the aforesaid section of the Constitu-
tion, shall be that he will faithfully discharge his duty, unless a
different form of oath is prescribed by law or ordinance.

10. Any person, whether elected or appointed to office, who
shall decline or neglect to take and subscribe the oaths prescribed
by the Constitution, or by law or ordinance, for the period of
thirty days from the day when the commission of such officer
has been received at the office of the respective clerks, or in
those cases in which no commission is sent to the clerks within