world, which forgives nothing, which spares not even its masters, should admire in us what it censures in others.
In effect, you complain that your enemy hath both privately and publicly decried you; that he hath added calumny to slander; that he hath attacked you in the tenderest and most feeling quarter, and that he hath neglected nothing to blast your honour and your reputation in the opinion of men.
But, before replying to this, I might first say to you, mistrust the reports which have been made to you of your brother: the most innocent speeches reach us so impoisoned, through the malignity of the tongues which have conveyed them; there are so many mean flatterers, who seek to be agreeable at the expense of those who are not so; there are so many dark and wicked minds, whose only pleasure is in finding out evil where none is meant, and in sowing dissension among men; there are so many volatile and imprudent characters, who unseasonably, and with an envenomed air, repeat what at first had been only said with the most innocent intentions; there are so many men, naturally given to the hyperbole, and in whose mouth every thing is magnified, and departs from the natural and simple truth. I here appeal to yourself: has it never happened to you, that your most innocent sayings have been impoisoned, and circumstances added to your recitals, which you had never even thought of? Have you not then exclaimed against the injustice and the malignity of the repeaters? Why might not you, in your turn, have been deceived? And if every thing which passes through a variety of channels, be in general adulterated, and never reach us in its original purity, why should you suppose that discourses which relate to you alone, were exempted from the same lot, and were entitled to more attention and belief?
You will no doubt reply, that these general maxims are not the point in question, and that the actions of which you complain are not doubtful, but positive. I admit it; and I ask, if your brother have not, on his side, the same reproaches to make to you; if you have always been very lenient, and very charitable to his faults; if you have always rendered justice even to his good qualities; if you never permitted him to be reviled in your presence; if you have not aided" the malignity of such discourses by an affected moderation, which hath only tended to blow up the fire of detraction, and to supply new traits against your brother? — I ask you, if you are even circumspect toward the rest of men; if you readily forgive the weakness of others; if your tongue be not, in general, dipt in wormwood and gall; if the best established reputation be not always in danger in your hands; and, if the saddest and most private histories do not speedily become matter of notoriety, through your malignity and imprudence? O man! thou pushest delicacy and sensibility to such lengths upon whatever regards thyself! We have occasion for all the terror of our ministry, and for all the other most weighty inducements of religion, to bring thee to forgive to thy brother a single speech, frequently a word, which imprudence,
