reason showeth quite the contrary, and they who are so charged are in just esteem of all men the least obnoxious to such accusations.  So, usually, the best friends of mankind, those who most heartily wish the peace and prosperity of the world and most earnestly to their power strive to promote them, have all the disturbances and disasters happening charged on them by those fiery vixens, who (in pursuance of their base designs, or gratification of their wild passions) really do themselves embroil things, and raise miserable combustions in the world.  So it is that they who have the conscience to do mischief will have the confidence also to disavow the blame and the iniquity, to lay the burden of it on those who are most innocent.  Thus, whereas nothing more disposeth men to live orderly and peaceably, nothing more conduceth to the settlement and safety of the public, nothing so much draweth blessings down from heaven upon the commonwealth, as true religion, yet nothing hath been more ordinary than to attribute all the miscarriages and mischiefs that happened unto it; even those are laid at his door, which plainly do arise from the contempt or neglect of it, being the natural fruits or the just punishments of irreligion.  King Ahab, by forsaking God’s commandments and following wicked superstitions, had troubled Israel, drawing sore judgments and calamities thereon; yet had he the heart and the face to charge those events on the great assertor of piety, Elias:  “Art thou he that troubleth Israel?” The Jews by provocation of Divine justice had set themselves in a fair way towards desolation and ruin; this event to come they had the presumption to lay upon the faith of our Lord’s doctrine.  “If,” said they, “we let him alone, all men will believe on him, and the Romans shall come, and take away our place and nation,” whereas, in truth, a compliance with his directions and admonitions had been the only means to prevent those presaged mischiefs.  And, si Tibris ascenderit in mania, if any public calamity did appear, then Christianos ad leones, Christians must be charged and persecuted as the causes thereof.  To them it was that Julian and other pagans did impute all the discussions, confusions, and devastations falling upon the Roman Empire.  The sacking of Rome by the Goths they cast upon Christianity; for the vindication of it from which reproach St. Augustine did write those renowned books ’De Civitate Dei.’  So liable are the best and most innocent sort of men to be calumniously accused in this manner.

Another practice (worthily bearing the guilt of slander) is, aiding and being accessory thereto, by anywise furthering, cherishing, abetting it.  He that by crafty significations of ill-will doth prompt the slanderer to vent his poison; he that by a willing audience and attention doth readily suck it up, or who greedily swalloweth it down by credulous approbation and assent; he that pleasingly relisheth and smacketh