tained by many,
which seem purposely levelled at the disparagement of piety,
charity, and justice, substituting interest in the room of
conscience, authorising and commending for good and wise, all ways
serving to private advantage. There are implacable dissensions,
fierce animosities, and bitter zeals sprung up; there is an extreme
curiosity, niceness, and delicacy of judgment: there is a mighty
affectation of seeming wise and witty by any means; there is a great
unsettlement of mind, and corruption of manners, generally diffused
over people: from which sources it is no wonder that this flood
hath so overflown, that no banks can restrain it, no fences are able
to resist it; so that ordinary conversation is full of it, and no
demeanour can be secure from it.

If we do mark what is done in many (might I not say, in most?)
companies, what is it but one telling malicious stories of, or
fastening odious characters upon another? What do men commonly
please themselves in so much, as in carping and harshly censuring,
in defaming and abusing their neighbours? Is it not the sport and
divertisement of many, to cast dirt in the faces of all they meet
with; to bespatter any man with foul imputations? Doth not in every
corner a Momus lurk, from the venom of whose spiteful or petulant
tongue no eminency of rank, dignity of place, or sacredness of
office, no innocence or integrity of life, no wisdom or
circumspection in behaviour, no good-nature or benignity in dealing
and carriage, can protect any person? Do not men assume to
themselves a liberty of telling romances, and framing characters
concerning their neighbour, as freely as a poet doth about Hector or
Turnus, Thersites or Draucus? Do they not usurp a power of playing
with, or tossing about, of tearing in pieces their neighbour's good
name, as if it were the veriest toy in the world? Do not many
having a form of godliness (some of them, demurely, others
confidently, both without any sense of, or remorse for what they do)
backbite their brethren? Is it not grown so common a thing to
asperse causelessly that no man wonders at it, that few dislike,
that scarce any detest it? that most notorious calumniators are
heard, not only with patience, but with pleasure; yea, are even held
in vogue and reverence as men of a notable talent, and very
serviceable to their party? so that slander seemeth to have lost its
nature, and not to be now an