old snake or dragon, hissing out lies, and spitting forth venom of
calumnious accusation; 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; opposite to all the principal
virtues (to veracity and sincerity, to charity and justice),
transgressing all the great commandments, violating immediately and
directly all the duties concerning our neighbour.

To lie simply is a great fault, being a deviation from that good
rule which prescribeth truth in all our words; rendering us unlike
and disagreeable to God, who is the God of truth (who loveth truth,
and practiseth it in all His doings, who abominateth all falsehood);
including a treacherous breach of faith towards 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 blamable 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.

Again, to bear any hatred or ill-will, to exercise enmity towards
any man, to design or procure any mischief to our neighbour, whom
even Jews were commanded to love as themselves, whose good, by many