s, justice doth never exaggerate them. As no man
is exempt from some defects, or can live free from some
misdemeanors, so by this practice every man may be rendered very
odious and infamous.

9. Another kind of slander is, imputing to our neighbor's practice,
judgment, or profession, evil consequences (apt to render him
odious, or despicable) which have no dependence on them, or
connection with them. There do in every age occur disorders and
mishaps, springing from various complications of causes, working
some of them in a more open and discernible, others in a more secret
and subtle way (especially from Divine judgment and providence
checking or chastising sin); from such occurrences it is common to
snatch occasion and matter of calumny. Those who are disposed this
way are ready peremptorily to charge them upon whomsoever they
dislike or dissent from, although without any apparent cause, or
upon most frivolous and senseless pretenses; yea, often when reason
showeth quite the contrary, and they who are so charged are in just
esteem of all men the least obnoxious to such accusations. So,
usually, the best friends of mankind, those who most heartily wish
the peace and prosperity of the world and most earnestly to their
power strive to promote them, have all the disturbances and
disasters happening charged on them by those fiery vixens, who (in
pursuance of their base designs, or gratification of their wild
passions) really do themselves embroil things, and raise miserable
combustions in the world. So it is that they who have the
conscience to do mischief will have the confidence also to disavow
the blame and the iniquity, to lay the burden of it on those who are
most innocent. Thus, whereas nothing more disposeth men to live
orderly and peaceably, nothing more conduceth to the settlement and
safety of the public, nothing so much draweth blessings down from
heaven upon the commonwealth, as true religion, yet nothing hath
been more ordinary than to attribute all the miscarriages and
mischiefs that happened unto it; even those are laid at his door,
which plainly do arise from the contempt or neglect of it, being the
natural fruits or the just punishments of irreligion. King Ahab, by
forsaking God's commandments and following wicked superstitions, had
troubled Israel, drawing sore judgments and calamities thereon; yet
had he the heart and the face to charge those events on the great
assertor of piety, Elias: "Art tho