himself in the conversations he meeteth; but will be tempted, with the holy prophet, to wish himself sequestered from society, and cast into solitude; repeating those words of his, “Oh, that I had in the wilderness a lodging-place of wayfaring men, that I might leave my people, and go from them:  for they are ... an assembly of treacherous men, and they bend their tongues like their bow for lies”?  This he wished in an age so resembling ours, that I fear the description with equal patness may suit both:  “Take ye heed” (said he then, and may we not advise the like now?) “every one of his neighbor, and trust ye not in any brother:  for every brother will utterly supplant, and every neighbor will walk with slanders.  They will deceive every one his neighbor, and will not speak the truth; they have taught their tongue to speak lies, and weary themselves to commit iniquity.”

Such being the state of things, obvious to experience, no discourse may seem more needful, or more useful, than that which serveth to correct or check this practice:  which I shall endeavor to do (1) by describing the nature, (2) by declaring the folly of it:  or showing it to be very true which the wise man here asserteth, “He that uttereth slander is a fool.”  Which particulars I hope so to prosecute, that any man shall be able easily to discern, and ready heartily to detest this practice.

1.  For explication of its nature, we may describe slander to be the uttering false (or equivalent to false, morally false) speech against our neighbor, in prejudice to his fame, his safety, his welfare, or concernment in any kind, out of malignity, vanity, rashness, ill-nature, or bad design.  That which is in Holy Scripture forbidden and reproved under several names and notions:  of bearing false witness, false accusation, railing censure, sycophantry, talebearing, whispering, backbiting, supplanting, taking up reproach:  which terms some of them do signify the nature, others denote the special kinds, others imply the manners, others suggest the ends of this practice.  But it seemeth most fully intelligible by observing the several kinds and degrees thereof; as also by reflecting on the divers ways and manners of practicing it.

The principal kinds thereof I observe to be these:—­

1.  The grossest kind of slander is that which in the Decalogue is called, bearing false testimony against our neighbor; that is, flatly charging him with acts which he never committed, and is nowise guilty of.  As in the case of Naboth, when men were suborned to say, “Naboth did blaspheme God and the king,” and as was David’s case, when he thus complained, “False witnesses did rise up, they laid to my charge things that I knew not of.”  This kind in the highest way (that is, in judicial proceedings) is more rare; and of all men, they who are detected to practice it are held most vile and infamous, as being plainly the most pernicious and perilous instruments of injustice,