to testify what it is convenient for him to have believed, (though it is not always believed,) these are yet more execrable: the two extremities of averfion are united in our fentiments of them; and they are, at the fame time, the most terrible, and most contemptible.

SER

HE THAT UTTERETH A SLANDER, IS A FOOL.

N the large field of falsehood, there

IN

is room for a multitude of offences, not fo terribly eminent as that lie, which we confirm by oath, and deliver folemnly in a court of justice.

The firft, however, approaches towards it; the calumny, which is known to be false,

falfe, and spoken with a design to do mifchief. The name of God, I grant, is not profaned, it is alfo fomething, that the very place and forms of justice, are not defiled and prostituted: in other refpects, the injuftice is much the fame; and the ftroke, fometimes, as heavy as that which is given by the hand of the executioner.

Reputation, of all poffeffions, is the most valuable, next to a good confcience; to which indeed it of right belongs, and from which it naturally fprings. The root lies out of the reach of injury: Your innocence, by God's grace, no one can take from you, without your own confent: but the fruit of a fair reputation, fo beautiful, and fragrant, and in all refpects fo precious, this, alas! hangs exposed to the affault of every paffenger: the loweft, as he goes along, can fling a ftone upwards, and laugh to fee the prize fall, though he cannot gather it.

It

30.

It is an aggravation of the crime, or at leaft of the folly of calumny, that commonly there is nothing to be gained by the commiffion of it. Men do not defpife a Prov. vi. thief, if he steal to fatisfy his foul, when he is hungry; but, if he be found, he fhall reftore feven fold; he fhall give all the fubftance of his houfe. But he who fteals away your reputation, has no pretence to the plea of neceffity; fince what he takes away from another, does not therefore fall into his own hands; and when he has ruined you by the robbery, he himself is no richer.

We have an account fomewhere, of a certain tribe of Savages, who are poffeffed of a perfuafion, that, whenever they have flain a man, they are immediately endowed with all his good qualities; which they think are transfufed from the foul of the dead, into the perfon that has killed him. You will not wonder, that murders are frequent in that country; and that it is very dangerous for a man

of