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 afflicted
with it;" there is no surer argument of extreme hatred; nothing but
the height of ill-will can suggest this practice. The slanderer is
an enemy, as the most fierce and outrageous, so the most base and
unworthy that can be; he fighteth with the most perilous and most
unlawful weapon, in the most furious and foul way that can be. His
weapon is an envenomed arrow, full of deadly poison, which he
shooteth suddenly, and feareth not: a weapon which by no force can
be resisted, by no art declined, whose impression is altogether
inevitable and unsustainable. It is a most insidious, most
treacherous and cowardly way of fighting; wherein manifestly the
weakest and basest spirits have extreme advantage, and may easily
prevail against the bravest and worthiest; for no man of honour or
honesty can in way of resistance or requital deign to use it, but
must infallibly without repugnance be borne down thereby. By it the
vile practiser achieveth the greatest mischief that can be. His
words are, as the psalmist saith of Doeg, devouring words: "Thou
lovest all devouring words, O thou deceitful tongue:" and, "A man,"
saith the wise man, "that beareth false witness against his
neighbour is a maul, and a sword, and a sharp arrow;" that is, he is
a complicated instrument of all mischiefs; he smiteth and bruiseth
like a maul, he cutteth and pierceth like a sword, he thus doth hurt
near at hand; and at a distance he woundeth like a sharp arrow; it
is hard anywhere to evade him, or to get out of his reach. "Many,"
saith another wise man, the imitator of Solomon, "have fallen by the
edge of the sword, but not so many as have fallen by the tongue.
Well is he that is defended from it, and hath not passed through the