weth
and condemneth it, but it is very odious and offensive to any
particular society or company, at least, wherein there is any sober
person, any who retaineth a sense of goodness, or is anywise
concerned for God's honour: for to any such person no language can
be more disgustful; nothing can more grate his ears, or fret his
heart, than to hear the sovereign object of his love and esteem so
mocked and slighted; to see the law of his Prince so disloyally
infringed, so contemptuously trampled on; to find his best Friend
and Benefactor so outrageously abused. To give him the lie were a
compliment, to spit in his face were an obligation, in comparison to
this usage.

Wherefore 'tis a wonder that any person of rank, any that hath in
him a spark of ingenuity, or doth at all pretend to good manners,
should find in his heart or deign to comply with so scurvy a
fashion: a fashion much more befitting the scum of the people than
the flower of the gentry; yea, rather much below any man endued with
a scrap of reason or a grain of goodness. Would we bethink
ourselves, modest, sober, and pertinent discourse would appear far
more generous and masculine than such mad hectoring the Almighty,
such boisterous insulting over the received laws and general notions
of mankind, such ruffianly swaggering against sobriety and goodness.
If gentlemen would regard the virtues of their ancestors, the
founders of their quality--that gallant courage and solid wisdom,
that noble courtesy, which advanced their families and severed them
from the vulgar--this degenerate wantonness and forbidness of
language would return to the dunghill, or rather, which God grant,
be quite banished from the world, the vulgar following their
example.

XII. Further, the words of our Lord, when He forbade this practice,
do suggest another consideration against it, deducible from the
causes and sources of it; from whence it cometh, that men are so
inclined or addicted thereto. "Let," saith He, "your communication
be Yea, yea, Nay, nay; for whatsoever is more than these cometh of
evil." The roots of it, He assureth us, are evil, and therefore the
fruit cannot be good: it is no grape which groweth from thorns, or
fig from thistles. Consult experience, and observe whence it doth
proceed.

Sometimes it ariseth from exorbitant heats of spirit, or transports
of unbridled passion. When a man is keenly peevish, or fiercely
angry