and ingratiate society, to render conversation pleasant and sprightly, for mutual satisfaction and comfort.

True festivity is called salt, and such it should be, giving a smart but savoury relish to discourse; exciting an appetite, not irritating disgust; cleansing sometimes, but never creating a sore: and εαν μωρανθη, (if it become thus insipid), or unsavoury, it is therefore good for nothing, but to be cast out, and trodden under foot of men.  Such jesting which doth not season wholesome or harmless discourse, but giveth a haut goût to putrid and poisonous stuff, gratifying distempered palates and corrupt stomachs, is indeed odious and despicable folly, to be cast out with loathing, to be trodden under foot with contempt.  If a man offends in this sort, to please himself, ’tis scurvy malignity; if to delight others, ’tis base servility and flattery: upon the first score he is a buffoon to himself; upon the last, a fool to others.  And well in common speech are such practisers so termed, the grounds of that practice being so vain, and the effect so unhappy.  The heart of fools, saith the wise man, is in the house of mirth; meaning, it seems, especially such hurtfully wanton mirth: for it is (as he further telleth us) the property of fools to delight in doing harm (“It is as sport to a fool to do mischief”).  Is it not in earnest most palpable folly, for so mean ends to do so great harm; to disoblige men in sport; to lose friends and get enemies for a conceit; out of a light humour to provoke fierce wrath, and breed tough hatred; to engage one’s self consequently very far in strife, danger, and trouble?  No way certainly is more apt to produce such effects than this; nothing more speedily inflameth, or more thoroughly engageth men, or sticketh longer in men’s hearts and memories, than bitter taunts and scoffs: whence this honey soon turns into gall; these jolly comedies do commonly terminate in woeful tragedies.

Especially this scurrilous and scoffing way is then most detestable when it not only exposeth the blemishes and infirmities of men, but abuseth piety and virtue themselves; flouting persons for their constancy in devotion, or their strict adherence to a conscientious practice of duty; aiming to effect that which Job complaineth of, “The just upright man is laughed to scorn;” resembling those whom the psalmist thus describeth, “Who whet their tongue like a sword, and bend their arrows, even bitter words, that they may shoot in secret at the perfect;” serving good men as Jeremy was served—“The word of the Lord,” saith he, “was made a reproach unto me, and a derision daily.”

This practice doth evidently in the highest degree tend to the disparagement and discouragement of goodness; aiming to expose it, and to render men ashamed thereof; and it manifestly proceedeth from a desperate corruption of mind, from a mind hardened and emboldened, sold and enslaved to wickedness: whence they who deal therein are in Holy Scripture represented as egregious sinners, or persons superlatively wicked, under the name of scorners (λοιμους, pests, or pestilent men, the Greek translators call them, properly enough in regard to the effects of their practice); concerning whom the wise man (signifying how God will meet with them in their own way) saith, “Surely the Lord scorneth the scorners.”  ‘Εμπαικτας (scoffers, or mockers), St. Peter termeth them, who walk according to their own lusts; who not being willing to practise, are ready to deride virtue; thereby striving to seduce others into their pernicious courses.

This offence also proportionably groweth more criminal as it presumeth to reach persons eminent in dignity or worth, unto whom special veneration is appropriate.  This adjoineth sauciness to scurrility, and advanceth the wrong thereof into a kind of sacrilege.  ’Tis not only injustice, but profaneness, to abuse the gods.  Their station is a sanctuary from all irreverence and reproach; they are seated on high, that we may only look up to them with respect; their defects are not to be seen, or not to be touched by malicious or wanton wits, by spiteful or scornful tongues: the diminution of their credit is a public mischief, and the State itself doth suffer in their becoming objects of scorn; not only themselves are vilified and degraded, but the great affairs they manage are obstructed, the justice they administer is disparaged thereby.

In fine, no jesting is allowable which is not thoroughly innocent: it is an unworthy perverting of wit to employ it in biting and scratching; in working prejudice to any man’s reputation or interest; in needlessly incensing any man’s anger or sorrow; in raising animosities, dissensions, and feuds among any.

Whence it is somewhat strange that any men from so mean and silly a practice should expect commendation, or that any should afford regard thereto; the which it is so far from meriting, that indeed contempt and abhorrence are due to it.  Men do truly more render themselves despicable than others when, without just ground, or reasonable occasion, they do attack others in this way.  That such a practice doth ever find any encouragement or acceptance, whence can it proceed, but from the bad nature and small judgment of some persons?  For to any man who is endowed with any sense of goodness, and hath a competence of true wit, or a right knowledge of good manners (who knows. . . . inurbanum lepido seponere dicto), it cannot but be unsavoury and loathsome.  The repute it obtaineth is in all respects unjust.  So would it appear, not only were the cause to be decided in a court of morality, because it consists not with virtue and wisdom; but even before any competent judges of wit itself.  For he overthrows his own pretence, and cannot reasonably claim any interest in wit, who doth thus behave himself: he prejudgeth himself to want wit, who cannot descry fit matter to divert himself or others: he discovereth a great straitness and sterility of good invention, who cannot in all the wide field of things find better subjects of discourse; who knows not how to be ingenious within reasonable compass, but to pick up a sorry conceit is forced to make excursions beyond the bounds of honesty and decency.

Neither is it any argument of considerable ability in him that haps to please this way: a slender faculty will serve the turn.  The sharpness of his speech cometh not from wit so much as from choler, which furnisheth the lowest inventions with a kind of pungent expression, and giveth an edge to every spiteful word: so that any dull wretch doth seem to scold eloquently and ingeniously.  Commonly also satirical taunts do owe their seeming piquancy, not to the speaker or his words, but to the subject, and the hearers; the matter conspiring with the bad nature or the vanity of men who love to laugh at any rate, and to be pleased at the expense of other men’s repute; conceiting themselves extolled by the depression of their neighbour, and hoping to gain by his loss.  Such customers they are that maintain the bitter wits, who otherwise would want trade, and might go a-begging.  For commonly they who seem to excel this way are miserably flat in other discourse, and most dully serious: they have a particular unaptness to describe any good thing, or commend any worthy person; being destitute of right ideas, and proper terms answerable to such purposes: their representations of that kind are absurd and unhandsome; their eulogies (to use their own way of speaking) are in effect satires, and they can hardly more abuse a man than by attempting to commend him; like those in the prophet, who were wise to do ill, but to do well had no knowledge.

3.  I pass by that it is very culpable to be facetious in obscene and smutty matters.  Such things are not to be discoursed on either in jest or in earnest; they must not, as St. Paul saith, be so much as named among Christians.  To meddle with them is not to disport, but to defile one’s self and others.  There is indeed no more certain