ourselves,
bereaving us of the chief goods, and exposing us to the worst evils.
What can be more egregiously absurd than to dissent in our opinion
and discord in our choice from infinite wisdom; to provoke by our
actions sovereign justice, and immutable severity: to oppose
almighty power, and offend immense goodness; to render ourselves
unlike and contrary in our doings, our disposition, our state, to
absolute perfection and felicity? What can be more desperately wild
than to disoblige our best Friend, to forfeit His love and favour,
to render Him our enemy, who is our Lord and our Judge, upon whose
mere will and disposal all our subsistence, all our welfare does
absolutely depend? What greater madness can be conceived than to
deprive our minds of all true content here, and to separate our
souls from eternal bliss hereafter; to gall our consciences now with
sore remorse, and to engage ourselves for ever in remediless
miseries? Such folly doth all sin include: whence in Scripture
style worthily goodness and wisdom are terms equivalent; sin and
folly do signify the same thing.

If thence this practice be proved extremely sinful, it will thence
sufficiently be demonstrated no less foolish. And that it is
extremely sinful may easily be shown. It is the character of the
superlatively wicked man: "Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy
tongue frameth deceit. Thou sittest and speakest against thy
brother; thou slanderest thine own mother's son." It is, indeed,
plainly the blackest and most hellish sin that can be; that which
giveth the grand fiend his names, and most expresseth his nature.
He is [Greek] (the slanderer); Satan, the spiteful adversary; the
old snake or dragon, hissing out lies, and spitting forth venom of
calumnious accusation; the accuser of the brethren, a murderous,
envious, malicious calumniator; the father of lies; the grand
defamer of God to man, of man to God, of one man to another. And
highly wicked surely must that practice be, whereby we grow
namesakes to him, conspire in proceeding with him, resemble his
disposition and nature. It is a complication, a comprisal, a
collection and sum of all wickedness; opposite to all the principal
virtues (to veracity and sincerity, to charity and justice),
transgressing all the great commandments, violating immediately and
directly all the duties concerning our neighbour.

To lie simply is a great fault, being a de