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I typed in that quote on google and found this:

The Book of Matthew and Numbers both contain passages in which one’s spoken vow becomes a sacred commitment. In Numbers, the Hebrew elder Moshe instructs the tribes of Israel: “When a man … swears an oath to bind his soul with a bond, he shall not break his word; he shall do according to all that proceeds out of his mouth.” Chaucer, too, punned on the idea of “trouthe”—to “pledge one’s trouthe” meant both to enter into an indissoluble contract and to affirm the semantic “truth” of the words manifesting that contract. The Bishop of Exeter, Joseph Hall, wrote in 1608 of “the honest man”: “His word is his parchment.”