XVIII. ALL TONGUE AND EARS.

WE read, Acts xvii. 21, All the Athenians, and strangers which were there, 204spent their time in nothing else but either to tell or to hear some new thing.

How cometh this transposition? tell and hear; it should be hear and tell; they must hear it before they could tell it; and in the very method of nature, those that are deaf are dumb.

But know, it is more than probable that many Athenians told what they never heard, being themselves the first finders, founders, and forgers of false reports, therewith merely to entertain the itching curiosity of others.

England aboundeth with many such Athenians; it is hard to say whether more false coin or false news be minted in our days. One side is not more pleased with their own factions than the other is with their own fictions.

Some pretend to intelligence without understanding, whose relations are their own confutations. I know some who repair to such novelants on purpose to know what news is false by their reporting thereof.