1. The most notoriously heinous way is, forging and immediately venting ill stories. As it is said of Doeg, "Thy tongue deviseth mischief;" and of another like companion, "Thou givest thy mouth to evil, and thy tongue frameth deceit;" and as our Lord saith of the devil, "When he speaketh a lie, [Greek], he speaketh of his own; for he is a liar, and the father of it." This palpably is the supreme pitch of calumny, incapable of any qualifications or excuse: hell cannot go beyond this; the cursed fiend himself cannot worse employ his wit than in minting wrongful falsehoods. 2. Another way is, receiving from others, and venting such stories, which they who do it certainly know or may reasonably presume to be false; the becoming hucksters of counterfeit wares, or factors in this vile trade. There is no false coiner who hath not some accomplices and emissaries ready to take from his hand and put off his money; and such slanderers at second hand are scarce less guilty than the first authors. He that breweth lies may have more wit and skill, but the broacher showeth the like malice and wickedness. In this there is no great difference between the great devil, that frameth scandalous reports, and the little imps that run about and disperse them. 3. Another way is, when one without competent examination, due weighing, and just reason, doth admit and spread tales prejudicial to his neighbour's welfare; relying for his warrant, as to the truth of them, upon any slight or slender authority. This is a very common and current practice: men presume it lawful enough to say over whatever they hear; to report anything, if they can quote an author for it. "It is not," say they, "my invention; I tell it as I heard it: sit fides penes authorem; let him that informed me undergo the blame if it prove false." So do they conceive themselves excusable for being the instruments of injurious disgrace and damage to their neighbours. But they greatly mistake therein; for as this practice commonly doth arise from the same wicked principles, at least in some degree, and produceth altogether the like mischievous effects, as the wilful devising and conveying slander: so it no less thwarteth the rules of duty, the laws of equity; God hath prohibited it, and reason doth condemn it. "Thou shalt not," saith God in the Law, "go up and down as a tale-bearer among thy people:" as a talebearer (as Rachil, that is), as a merchant or trader in ill reports and stories concerning our neighbour, to his prejudice. Not only the framing of them, but the dealing in them beyond reason or necessity, is interdicted. And it is part of a good man's character in Psalm xv., Non accipit opprobrium, "He taketh not up a reproach against his neighbour;" that is, he doth not easily entertain it, much less doth he effectually propagate it: and in our text, "He," it is said, "that uttereth slander" (not only he that conceiveth it) "is a fool."