Now let us bring this home; you rejoice that the faggot and the stake are given up;--_you_ never persecuted--you leave that to the wicked Church of Rome. Yes, you never burned a human being alive--you never clapped your hands as the death-shriek proclaimed that the lion's fang had gone home into the most vital part of the victim's frame; but did you never rob him of his friends?--gravely shake your head and oracularly insinuate that he was leading souls to hell?--chill the affections of his family?--take from him his good name? Did you never with delight see his Church placarded as the Man of Sin, and hear the platform denunciations which branded it with the spiritual abominations of the Apocalypse? Did you never find a malicious pleasure in repeating all the miserable gossip with which religious slander fastened upon his daily acts, his words, and even his uncommunicated thoughts? Did you never forget that for a man to "work out his own salvation with fear and trembling" is a matter difficult enough to be laid upon a human spirit, without intruding into the most sacred department of another's life--that namely, which lies between himself and God? Did you never say that "it was to be wished he should go to Rome," until at last life became intolerable,--until he was thrown more and more in upon himself; found himself, like his Redeemer, in this world alone, but unable like his Redeemer, calmly to repose upon the thought that his Father was with him? Then a stern defiant spirit took possession of his soul, and there burst from his lips, or heart, the wish for _rest_--rest at any cost,--peace anywhere, if even it is to be found only in the bosom of the Church of Rome! II. The guilt of this license. The first evil consequence is the harm that a man does himself: "so is the tongue among the members, that it defiles the whole body." It is not very obvious, in what way a man does himself harm by calumny. I will take the simplest form in which this injury is done; it effects a dissipation of spiritual energy. There are two ways in which the steam of machinery may find an outlet for its force: it may work, and if so it works silently; or it may escape, and that takes place loudly, in air and noise. There are two ways in which the spiritual energy of a man's soul may find its vent: it may express itself in action, silently; or in words, noisily: but just so much of force as is thrown into the one mode of expression, is taken from the other.