caution and care: to brandish it wantonly, to lay SERM. about with it blindly and furiously, to slash and XVII. smite therewith any that happeth to come in our way, doth argue malice or madness.

7. It is an ordinary way of proceeding to calumniate, for men, reflecting upon some bad disposition in themselves, (although resulting from their own particular temper, from their bad principles, or from their ill custom,) to charge it presently upon others; presuming others to be like themselves: like the wicked person in the Psalm, Thou thoughtest that I Ps. 1. 21. was altogether such an one as thyself. This is to slander mankind first in the gross; then in retail, as occasion serveth, to asperse any man: this is the way of half-witted Machiavelians, and of desperate reprobates in wickedness, who, having prostituted their consciences to vice, for their own defence and solace, would shrowd d themselves from blame under the shelter of common pravity and infirmity; accusing all men of that whereof they know themselves guilty. But surely there can be no greater iniquity than this, that one man should undergo blame for the ill conscience of another.

These seem to be the chief kinds of slander, and most common ways of practising it. In which description the folly thereof doth, I suppose, so clearly shine, that no man can look thereon without loathing and despising it, as not only a very ugly, but a most foolish practice. No man surely can be wise,

d Remedium pœnæ suæ arbitrantur, si nemo sit sanctus, si omnibus detrahatur, si turba sit pereuntium, &c. Hier. ad Asellam, Ep. xcix.

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SERM. who will suffer himself to be defiled therewith. But XVII. to render its folly more apparent, we shall display

it; declaring it to be extremely foolish upon several accounts. But the doing this, in regard to your patience, we shall forbear at present.

SERMON XVIII.

THE FOLLY OF SLANDER.

PROV. X. 18.

He that uttereth slander is a fool.

I HAVE formerly in this place, discoursing upon SERM. this text, explained the nature of the sin here con- XVIII. demned, with its several kinds and ways of practising.

II. I shall now proceed to declare the folly of it; and to make good by divers reasons the assertion of the Wise Man, that he who uttereth slander is a fool.

1. Slandering is foolish, as sinful and wicked.

All sin is foolish upon many accounts; as proceeding from ignorance, error, inconsiderateness, vanity; as implying weak judgment and irrational choice; as thwarting the dictates of reason and best rules of wisdom; as producing very mischievous effects to ourselves, bereaving us of the chief goods, and exposing us to the worst evils. What can be more egregiously absurd, than to dissent in our opinion and discord in our choice from infinite wisdom; to provoke by our actions sovereign justice and immutable severity; to oppose almighty power, and offend immense goodness; to render ourselves unlike, and contrary in our doings, our disposition, our state, to absolute perfection and felicity? What can be more

SERM. desperately wild, than to disoblige our best friend, XVIII. to forfeit his love and favour, to render him our enemy, who is our Lord and our Judge, upon whose mere will and disposal all our subsistence, all our welfare does absolutely depend? What greater madness can be conceived, than to deprive our minds of all true content here, and to separate our souls from eternal bliss hereafter; to gall our consciences now with sore remorse, and to engage ourselves for ever in remediless miseries? Such folly doth all sin include: whence in scripture style worthily goodness and wisdom are terms equivalent; sin and folly do signify the same thing.

If thence this practice be proved extremely sinful, it will thence sufficiently be demonstrated no less foolish. And that it is extremely sinful, may easily be shewed. It is the character of the superlatively Ps. 1. 19, 20. wicked man; Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit: thou sittest and speakest against thy brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son. It is indeed plainly the blackest and most hellish sin that can be; that which giveth the grand fiend his names, and most expresseth his nature. He is Aláßoλos, the slanderer; Satan, the spiteful adversary; the old snake, or dragon, hissing out lies, and spitting forth venom of calumnious acApoc. xii. cusation; the accuser of the brethren, a murderous, envious, malicious calumniator; the father of lies; the grand defamer of God to man, of man to God, of one man to another. And highly wicked surely must that practice be, whereby we grow namesakes to him, conspire in proceeding with him, resemble his disposition and nature. It is a complication, a comprisal, a collection and sum of all wickedness;

10.

Joh.viii. 44.

XVIII.

opposite to all the principal virtues, (to veracity and SERM. sincerity, to charity and justice,) transgressing all the great commandments, violating immediately and directly all the duties concerning our neighbour.

1 Pet. ii. 1.

lxxxvi. 15.

cxlvi. 6.

To lie simply is a great fault, being a deviation Eph. iv. 25. from that good rule which prescribeth truth in all ps. xxxi. 5. our words; rendering us unlike and disagreeable to xxv. 10. God, who is the God of truth; (who loveth truth, lxxxix. 14. and practiseth it in all his doings, who abominateth Prov. xii. all falsehood;) including a treacherous breach of 22. vi. 17. faith toward mankind; (we being all, in order to the maintenance of society, by an implicit compact, obliged by speech to declare our mind, to inform truly, and not to impose upon our neighbour;) arguing pusillanimous timorousness and impotency of mind, a distrust in God's help, and diffidence in all good means to compass our designs; begetting deception and error, a foul and ill-favoured brood: lying, I say, is upon such accounts a sinful and blameable thing: and of all lies those certainly are the worst, which proceed from malice, or from vanity, or from both, and which work mischief; such as slanders are.

18.

Again, to bear any hatred or ill-will, to exercise enmity toward any man, to design or procure any mischief to our neighbour, whom even Jews were commanded to love as themselves, whose good, by Levit. xix. many laws, and upon divers scores, we are obliged to tender as our own, is a heinous fault: and of this apparently the slanderer is most guilty in the highest degree. For evidently true it is which the Wise Man affirmeth, A lying tongue hateth those that are Prov.xxvi. afflicted with it; there is no surer argument of extreme hatred; nothing but the height of ill-will can

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