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SERMON IX.

THE GOOD AND EVIL TONGUE.

EPHESIANS, CHAP. IV.-VERSE 29.

Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace

unto the hearers.

PART I.

He that had an ill memory, did wisely comfort himself by reckoning the advantages he had by his forgetfulness: for by this means he was hugely secured against malice and ambition; for his anger went off with the short notice and observation of the injury; and he saw himself unfit for the businesses of other men, or to make records in his head, and undertake to conduct the intrigues of affairs of a multitude, who was apt to forget the little accounts of his own seldom reading. He also remembered this, that his pleasures in reading books were more frequent, while he remembered but little of yesterday's study, and to-morrow the book is news, and, with its novelties, gives him fresh entertainment, while the retaining brain lays the book aside, and is full already. Every book is new to an ill memory, and one long book is a library, and its parts return fresh as the morning, which becomes a new day, though by the revolution of the same sun. Besides these, it brought him to tell truth for fear of shame, and in mere necessity made his speech little, and his discoursings short; because the web drawn from his brain was soon spun out, and his fountain grew quickly dry, and left running through forgetfulness. He that is not eloquent

and fair-spoken, hath some of these comforts to plead in excuse of his ill fortune or defective nature. For if he can but hold his peace, he shall be sure not to be troublesome to his company, nor marked for lying, nor become tedious with multiplicity of idle talk; he shall be presumed wise, and oftentimes is so; he shall not feel the wounds of contention, nor be put to excuse an ill-taken saying, nor sigh for the folly of an irrecoverable word: if his fault be that he hath not spoken, that can at any time be mended; but if he sinned in speaking, it cannot be unspoken again. Thus he escapes the dishonor of not being believed, and the trouble of being suspected; he shall never fear the sentence of judges, nor the decrees of courts, high reproaches, or the angry words of the proud, the contradiction of the disputing man, or the thirst of talkers. By these, and many other advantages, he that holds his peace, and he that cannot speak, may please themselves; and he may at least have the rewards and effects of solitariness, if he misses some of the pleasures of society. But by the use of the tongue, God hath distinguished us from beasts, and by the well or ill using it, we are distinguished from one another; and therefore, though silence be innocent as death, harmless as a rose's breath to a distant passenger, yet it is rather the state of death than life: and therefore when the Egyptians sacrificed to Harpocrates, their god of silence, in the midst of their rites they cried out, γλῶσσα δαίμων, yλwooa daiμwv, “the tongue is an angel," good or bad, that is as it happens; silence was to them a god, but the tongue is greater; it is the band of human intercourse, and makes men apt to unite in societies and republics: and I remember what one of the ancients said, that we are better in the company of a known dog, than of a man whose speech is not known, ut externus alieno non sit hominis vice; "a stranger to a stranger in his language, is not as a man to a man;" for by voices and homilies, by questions and answers, by narratives and invectives, by counsel and reproof, by praises and hymns, by prayers and glorifications, we serve God's glory, and the necessities of men; and by the tongue our tables are made to differ from mangers, our cities from deserts, our churches from herds of beasts, and flocks of sheep. Faith comes by hearing, and hearing by the word of God,' spoken by the tongues of men

and angels; and the blessed spirits in heaven cease not from saying, night and day, their Tpoáyior, "their song of glory,' to him that sitteth on the throne, and to the Lamb, for ever and ever; and then our employment shall be glorious as our state, when our tongues shall to eternal ages sing hallelujahs to their Maker and Redeemer; and therefore, since nature hath taught us to speak, and God requires it, and our thankfulness obliges us, and our necessities engage us, and charity sometimes calls for it, and innocence is to be defended, and we are to speak in the cause of the oppressed, and open our mouths in the cause of God, and it is always a seasonable prayer, that God would open our lips, that our mouth may do the work of heaven, and declare his praises, and show forth his glory; it concerns us to take care that nature be changed into grace, necessity into choice, that, while we speak the greatness of God, and minister to the needs of our neighbor, and do the works of life and religion, of society and prudence, we may be fitted to bear a part in the songs of angels, when they shall rejoice at the feast of the marriage-supper of the Lamb. But the tongue is a fountain both of bitter waters and of pleasant; it sends forth blessing and cursing; it praises God, and rails at men; it is sometimes set on fire, and then it puts whole cities in combustion; it is unruly, and no more to be restrained than the breath of a tempest; it is volatile and fugitive : reason should go before it, and when it does not, repentance comes after it; it was intended for an organ of the divine praises, but the devil often plays on it, and then it sounds like the screech-owl, or the groans of death; sorrow and shame, folly and repentance, are the notes and formidable accents of that discord. We all are naturally λογόpiλoi, "lovers of speech," more or less; and God reproves it not, provided that we be also pλóλoyou, "wise and material, φιλόλογοι, useful and prudent, in our discourses." For since speech is for conversation, let it be also charitable and profitable, let it be without sin, but not without profit and grace to the hearers, and then it is as God would have it; and this is the precept of the text, first telling us what we should avoid, and then telling us what we should pursue; what our discourse ought not to be, and, secondly, what it ought to be. There being no more variety in the structure of the words, I shall, 1. discourse

TAY.

VOL. II.

D

of the vices of the tongue; 2. of its duty and proper employ

ment.

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I. Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth;' πãs ỏ σaπpòs λóyos, corrupt or filthy' communication; so we read it: and it seems properly to note such communication as ministers to wantonness; such as are the Fescennines of Ausonius, the excrement and spume of Martial's verse, and the Ephesiaca of Xenophon: indeed, this is such a rudeness as is not to be admitted into civil conversation; and is wittily noted by the Apostle, charging that fornication should not be once named among them, as becometh saints;' not meaning that the vice should not have its name and filthy character, but that nothing of it be named, in which it can be tempting or offensive; nothing tending to it, or teaching of it, should be named; we must not have πópvov λóyov, 'fornication in our talk;' that is such a baseness, that it not only grieves the Divine Spirit, but dishonors all its channels and conveyances: the proper language of the sin is not fit to be used so much as in reproof; and therefore, I have sometimes wondered, how it came to pass, that some of the ancients, men wise and modest, chaste and of sober spirits, have fallen into a fond liberty of declamation against uncleanness, using such words which bring that sin on the stage of fancy, and offend auriculas non calentes," sober and chaste ears." For who can, without blushing, read Seneca describing the looking-glass of Hostius, or the severe but looser words of Persius, or the reproofs of St. Jerome himself, that great patron of virginity, and exacter of chastity? yet more than once he reproves filthy things with unhandsome language: St. Chrysostom makes an apology for them that do so ; ἐὰν μὲν γὰρ σεμνῶς εἰπῇς, οὐ δυνήση καθικέσθαι τοῦ ἀκούοντος· ἐὰν δὲ βουληθῇς καθάψασθαι, σφοδρῶς ἀνάγκην ἔχεις ἀπογυμνῶσαι σαφέστερον τὰ λεγόμενα,* “ you cannot proft the hearers unless you discover the filthiness," for the withdrawing the curtain is shame and confutation enough for so great a baseness; and chirurgeons care not how they defile their hand, so they may do profit to the patient. And, indeed, there is a material difference in the design of him that speaks;

* Homil. 4. in ep. Rom.

if he speaks et oikeίov Tábovs, "according to his secret affection" and private folly, it is certainly intolerable: but yet if he speaks άrò ndeμorías, "out of a desire to profit" the hearer, and cure the criminal, though it be in the whole kind of it honest and well meant; yet, that it is imprudent,

(Irritamentum Veneris languentis, et acres
Divitis urticæ)*

and not wholly to be excused by the fair meaning, will soon be granted by all who know what danger and infection it leaves on the fancy, even by those words by which the spirit is instructed. Ab hac scabie teneamus ungues; it is not good to come near the leprosy, though to cleanse the leper's skin.

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But the word which the Apostle uses, σarpòs λóyos, means more than this. Σαπρὸν οὐ τὸ μοχθηρὸν φαῦλον, ἀλλὰ τὸ παλαιὸν, said Eupolis; and so it signifies "musty, rotten, and outworn with age;" eipývns σaπpas, "rusty peace," so Aristophanes (Pax, 554.): and, according to this acceptation of the word, we are forbidden to use all language that is in any sense corrupted, unreasonable, or useless; language proceeding from an old iniquity, evil habits, or unworthy customs, called, in the style of Scripture, "the remains of the old man," and by the Greeks, doting” or “ talking fondly ;” τὸ παιδαρίον εἶ, καὶ φρονεῖς ἀρχαϊκά· xaïká "the boy talks like an old dotard." 2. Zarpòs signifies “ wicked, filthy, or reproachful;” σαπρὸν, αἰσχρὸν, ἀκάθαρτον, 'any thing that is in its own nature criminal and disgraceful, any language that ministers to mischief." But it is worse than all this campos ó ȧparioμòs, "it is a deletery, an extinction of all good;” for ἀφανίζομαι is φθείρω, λυμαίνομαι, καταλύω, it is "a destruction, an entire corruption," of all morality; and to this sense is that of Menander, quoted by St. Paul, 40cípovσiv ĥ0n χρῆσθ ̓ ὁμιλίαι κακαί· • Evil communications corrupt good manners.' And therefore, under this word is comprised all the evil of the tongue, that wicked instrument of the unclean spirit, in the capacity of all the appellatives. 1. Here is forbidden the useless, vain, and trifling conversation, the Beeλeßoù, "the god

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Juv. xi. 165.

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