They who have attained to a self-pleasing pitch of civility or formal
religion, have usually that point of presumption with it, that they
make their own size the model and rule to examine all by. What is
below it, they condemn indeed as profane; but what is beyond it, they
account needless and affected preciseness; and therefore are as ready
as others to let fly invectives or bitter taunts against it, which are
the keen and poisoned shafts of the tongue, and a persecution that
shall be called to a strict account.
The slanders, perchance, may not be altogether forged or untrue; they
may be the implements, not the inventions, of Malice. But they do not
on this account escape the guilt of detraction. Rather, it is
characteristic of the evil spirit in question, to work by the
advantage of real faults; but these stretched and aggravated to the
utmost. IT IS NOT EXPRESSIBLE HOW DEEP A WOUND A TONGUE SHARPENED TO
THIS WORK WILL GIVE, WITH NO NOISE AND A VERY LITTLE WORD. This is the
true _white_ gunpowder, which the dreaming Projectors of silent
Mischiefs and insensible Poisons sought for in the Laboratories of Art
and Nature, in a World of Good; but which was to be found, in its most
destructive form, in "the World of Evil, the Tongue."