n with no patience endure that others should touch
it; which demonstrates the inconsiderateness of their judgment, and
the iniquity of their practice. It is an injustice not to be
corrected or cured. Thefts may be restored, wounds may be cured;
but there is no restitution or cure of a lost good name: it is
therefore an irreparable injury.

Nor is the thing itself, in true judgment, contemptible; but in
itself really very considerable. "A good name," saith Solomon
himself (no fool), "is rather to be chosen than great riches; and
loving favour rather than silver and gold." In its consequences it
is much more so; the chief interests of a man, the success of his
affairs, his ability to do good (for himself, his friends, his
neighbour), his safety, the best comforts and conveniences of his
life, sometimes his life itself, depending thereon; so that whoever
doth snatch or filch it from him, doth not only according to his
opinion, and in moral value, but in real effect commonly rob,
sometimes murder, ever exceedingly wrong his neighbour. It is often
the sole reward of a man's virtue and all the fruit of his industry;
so that by depriving him of that, he is robbed of all his estate,
and left stark naked of all, excepting a good conscience, which is
beyond the reach of the world, and which no malice or misfortune can
divest him of. Full then of iniquity, full of uncharitableness,
full of all wickedness is this practice; and consequently full it is
of folly. No man, one would think, of any tolerable sense, should
dare or deign to incur the guilt of a practice so vile and base, so
indeed diabolical and detestable. But further more particularly--

2. The slanderer is plainly a fool, because he maketh wrong
judgments and valuations of things, and accordingly driveth on silly
bargains for himself, in result whereof he proveth a great loser.
He means by his calumnious stories either to vent some passion
boiling in him, or to compass some design which he affects, or to
please some humour that he is possessed with: but is any of these
things worth purchasing at so dear a rate? can there be any valuable
exchange for our honesty? Is it not more advisable to suppress our
passion, or to let it evaporate otherwise, than to discharge it in
so foul a way? Is it not better to let go a petty interest, than to
further it by committing so notorious and heinous a sin; to let an
ambitious project si