2. Herein the Lord left a pattern of patience to every Christian, who must not think to escape, since the great Master himself was wounded by malicious tongues. The more conformable any one is to Christ, and the more zealously he follows Christ’s steps, the more is he also insulted by false and deceitful tongues. This plainly appears from the example of holy David, who was tormented by slanderers, as he himself complains in the following Psalms: 3, 4, 10, 12, 15, 31, 50, 52, 55, 58, 64, 69, 102, 120, and 140. Indeed, there is no one of the prophets of old who did not have these deadly arrows shot against him by murderous tongues; for “their tongue is an arrow shot out: he speaks peaceably to his neighbor with his mouth, but in heart he layeth his wait.” Jer. 9:8. All honest hearts ought, therefore, to beware of back-biters. As he that toucheth a man infected with leprosy, or any infectious distemper, must expect to be so infected; so he that gives ear to lying tongues, too often catches the same distemper. 3. Now, since a Christian is forbidden to retort evil for evil (Rom. 12:17; Matt 5:39), (this agreeing in no wise with the Christian faith); there is no other counsel left, but that by a conscience void of offence, he derives his comfort from those divine oracles with which the Lord has furnished him for that purpose. 4. (1) Let thy first comfort be the example of Christ and of all the saints. It fares no worse with us in this respect, than with Christ our Head, and with all that have ever been most dear to him. Nothing of this kind has befallen us, which has not been before in all ages undergone by his followers. And since the examples of others have generally a strong influence on our lives, and readily suggest themselves to our remembrance in time of trouble; we ought, therefore, to improve all those instances into an encouragement to bear our treatment with patience, for the sake of the joy that usually springs up from the reproach of the cross. Look then upon the Prince of thy salvation, look upon the lives of all the saints of old, those who have been the greatest lights in their generation. Consider the example of Moses, who esteemed the reproach of Christ greater riches than the treasures in Egypt (Heb. 11:26), and who, by reason of the continual contradictions he underwent, is said to have been a man meek, or afflicted, above all the men which were upon the face of the earth. Numb. 12:3. And what shall we say of David? He was truly, in his time, the very mark, as it were, at which all the false tongues in the land shot their murderous arrows. “Mine enemies,” said he, “revile me all the day long: and they that are mad against me, are sworn together against me.” Ps. 102:8. They affronted him daily with the reproach of his misery, turning him, as it were, into a proverb, and offering him the most heinous indignity that can be offered to a man. What shall we say of Job? How was