Eighthly, such manner of speech brings the honour of others in question.
Ninthly, and principally, it endangers the soul of the evil speaker.
Tenthly, it occasions enmities and the fatal consequences resulting therefrom.
Eleventhly, husbands by such speeches may be led to suspect their wives, to use them ill, to desert them, and peradventure to make away with them.
Twelfthly, a man thereby obtains the character of being a slanderer.
Thirteenthly, he brings himself in jeopardy with those who may think themselves bound to vindicate a lady's reputation or revenge the wrong which has been done to it.
Fourteenthly, to speak ill of women is a sin because of the beauty which distinguishes their sex, which beauty is so admirable that there is more to praise in one woman than there can be to condemn in all.
Fifteenthly, it is a sin because all the benefactors of mankind have been born of women, and therefore we are obliged to women for all the good that has ever been done in the world.
Such are the fifteen reasons which Diego de San Pedro excogitated to show that it is wrong for men to speak ill of women; and the twenty reasons which he has superinduced to prove that they are bound to speak well of them are equally cogent and not less curious. I have a reason of my own for reserving these till another opportunity. Not however to disappoint my fair readers altogether of that due praise which they have so properly expected, I will conclude the present chapter with a few flowers taken from the pulpit of my old acquaintance Adam Littleton. There is no impropriety in calling him so, though he died before my grandfathers and grandmothers were born; and when I meet him in the next world I hope to improve this one sided acquaintance by introducing myself and thanking him for his Dictionary and his Sermons.
The passage occurs in a sermon preached at the obsequies of the Right Honourable the Lady Jane Cheyne. The text was “Favour is deceitful, and Beauty is vain; but a woman that feareth the Lord, she shall be praised:” in which proposition, says the Preacher, we have first the subject, Woman, with her qualification that fears the Lord: Secondly the predicate, she shall be praised.