SERMON XXV. THE DUTIES OF THE TONGUE. EPHES. iv. latter part of verse 29. But that which is good to the use of edifying, that it may minister grace unto the hearers. II. Loquendi magistros habemus homines, tacendi Deos, said one", 'Men teach us to speak, and God teaches us to hold our tongue;' the first we are taught by the lectures of our schools, the latter by the mysteries of the temple. But now in the new institution we have also a great master of speaking; and though silence is one of the great paths of innocence, yet holy speaking is the instrument of spiritual charity, and is a glorification of God; and therefore this kind of speaking is a degree of perfection beyond the wisdom and severity of silence. For although garrulity and foolish inordinate talking is a conjunction of folly and sin, and the prating man while he desires to get the love of them he converses with incurs their hatred; while he would be admired is laughed at; he spends much and gets nothing: he wrongs his friends, and makes sport to his enemies, and injures himself; he is derided when he tells what others know, he is endangered if he tells a secret aud what they know not; he is not believed when he tells good news, and when he tells ill news he is odious; and therefore that silence which is a cure of all this evil is an excellent portion of safety and religion yet it is with holy speaking and innocent silence as it is with a hermit and a bishop; the first goes to a good school, but the second is proceeded towards greater perfection; and therefore the practical life of ecclesiastical governors, being found in the way of holiness and zeal, is called status perfectionis; a more excellent and perfect condition of life, and far beyond the retirements and inoffensive life of those innocent persons, which do so much less of profit, by how much charity is better than meditation, and going to heaven by religion and charity, by serving God and converting souls, is better than going to heaven by prayers and secret thoughts. So it is with silence and religious communication; that does not b Plut. de garrul., tom. viii. p. 14.] offend God, this glorifies Him that prevents sin, this sets forward the interests of religion. And therefore Plutarch said well, Qui generose et regio more instituuntur primum tacere deinde loqui discunt; to be taught first to be silent, then to speak well and handsomely, is education fit for a prince;' and that is St. Paul's method here: first we were taught how to restrain our tongues in the foregoing instances, and now we are called to employ them in religion. : : We must speak that which is good,' ayaóv т, any thing that may serve the ends of our God and of our neighbour, in the measures of religion and usefulness. But it is here as in all other propositions of religion: God to us, who are in the body, and conducted by material phantasms, and understanding nothing but what we feel, or is conveyed to us by the proportions of what we do or have, hath given us a religion that is fitted to our condition and constitution and therefore when we are commanded to love God, by this love Christ understands obedience; when we are commanded to honour God, it is by singing and reciting His praises, and doing things which cause reputation and honour and even here, when we are commanded to speak that which is good, it is instanced in such good things which are really profitable, practically useful. And here the measures of God are especially by the proportions of our neighbour and therefore though speaking honourable things of God be an employment that does honour to our tongues and voices, yet we must tune and compose even these notes so as may best profit our neighbour; for so it must be λóyos ayalòs, 'good speech,' such as is εἰς οἰκοδομὴν τῆς χρείας, “for the edification of necessity: the phrase is a hebraism, where the genitive case of a substantive is put for the adjective; and means that our speech be apted to necessary edification, or such edification as is needful to every man's particular case; that is, that we so order our communication that it be apt to instruct the ignorant, to strengthen the weak, to recall the wanderer, to restrain the vicious, to comfort the disconsolate, to speak a word in season to every man's necessity, ira do xáp, that it may minister grace;' something that may please and profit them, according as they shall need. All which I shall reduce to these three heads ;— 1. To instruct. 2. To comfort. 3. To reprove. First, our conversation must be didaкTIKòs, apt to teach.' For since all our hopes on our part depend upon our obedience to God, and conformity to our Lord Jesus, by whom our endeavours are sanctified and accepted, and our weaknesses are pardoned; and all our obedience relies upon, and is encouraged and grounded in, faith, and faith is founded naturally and primarily in the understanding: we may observe that it is not only reasonably to be expected, but experimentally felt, that in weak and ignorant understandings there [Vid. de audit., tom. vi. p. 141.] are no sufficient supports for the vigorousness of a holy life; there being nothing, or not enough, to warrant and strengthen great resolutions, to reconcile our affections to difficulties, to make us patient of affronts, to receive deeper mortifications and ruder usages, unless where an extraordinary grace supplies the want of ordinary notices, as the apostles were enabled to their preachings; but he therefore that carries and imports into the understanding of his brother notices of faith, and incomes of spiritual propositions, and arguments of the Spirit, enables his brother towards the work and practices of a holy life. And though every argument which the Spirit of God hath made and recorded in holy scripture is of itself inducement great enough to endear obedience, yet it is not so in the event of things to every man's infirmity and need; but in the treasures of the Spirit, in the heaps and variety of institution, and wise discourses, there will not only be enough to make a man without excuse, but sufficient to do his work, and to cure his evil, and to fortify his weaker parts, and to comply with his necessities. For although God's sufficient grace is present to all that can use it, yet if there be no more than that, it is a sad consideration to remember that there are but few that will be saved if they be helped but with just so much as can possibly do the work. And this we may well be assured of if we consider, that God is never wanting to any man in what is simply necessary; but then if we add this also, that of the vast numbers of men who might possibly be saved so few really are so, we shall perceive that that grace which only is sufficient, is not sufficient; sufficient to the thing, is not sufficient for the person; and therefore that God does usually give us more, and we need more yet; and unless God "works in us to will and to do," we shall neither 'will' nor 'do;' though to will be in the power of our hand, yet we will not will; it follows from hence, that all they who will comply with God's method of graciousness and the necessities of their brethren, must endeavour by all means and in all their own measures and capacities to lay up treasures of notices and instructions in their brother's soul, that by some argument or other they may be met withal, and taken in every corner of their conversation. Add to this that the duty of a man hath great variety, and the souls of men are infinitely abused, and the persuasions of men are strangely divided, and the interests of men are a violent and preternatural declination from the strictnesses of virtue, and the resolutions of men are quickly altered and very hardly to be secured, and the cases of conscience are numerous and intricate, and every state of life hath its proper prejudice, and our notices are abused by our affections, and we shall perceive that men generally need knowledge enough to overpower all their passions, to root out their vicious inclinations, to master their prejudice, to answer objections, to resist temptations, to refresh their weariness, to fix their resolutions, and to determine [Phil. ii. 13.] [Life that hath,' in first two edd.] their doubts; and therefore to see your brother in a state of ignorance is to see him unfurnished and unprepared to all good works, a person safe no longer than till a temptation comes, and one that cannot be saved but by an absolute unlimited predestination, a "avour of which he hath no promise, no security, no revelation; and although to do this God hath appointed a special order of men, the whole ecclesiastical order, whom He feeds at His own charges, and whom men rob at their own peril, yet this doth not disoblige others: for every master of a family is to instruct, or cause his family to be instructed, and catechized; every governor is to instruct his charge, every man his brother, not always in person, but ever by all possible and just provisions. For if the people die for want of knowledge, they who are set over them shall also die for want of charity. Here therefore we must remember that it is the duty of us all in our several measures and proportions to instruct those that need it, and whose necessity is made ready for our ministration; and let us tremble to think what will be the sad account which we shall make when even our families are not taught in the fundamentals of religion: for how can it be possible for those who could not account concerning the stories of Christ's life and death, the ministries of their redemption, the foundation of all their hopes, the great argument of all their obediences; how can it be expected that they should ride in triumph over all the evils which the devil, and the world, and their own follies, daily present to them in the course of every day's conversation? And it will be an ill return to say that God will require no more of them than He hath given them; for suppose that be true in your own sense, yet He will require it of thee, because thou gavest them no more; and however, it is a formidable danger, and a trifling hope, for any man to put all the hopes of his being saved upon the only stock of ignorance; for if his ignorance should never be accounted for, yet it may leave him in that state in which his evils shall grow great, and his sins may be irremediable. Secondly, our conversation must be maрáкλnтos, apt to comfort' the disconsolate: and than this men in present can feel no greater charity for since half the duty of a Christian in this life consists in the exercise of passive graces, and the infinite variety of providence, and the perpetual adversity of chances, and the dissatisfaction and emptiness that is in things themselves, and the weariness and anguish of our spirit, does call us to the trial and exercise of patience even in the days of sunshine, and much more in the violent storms that shake our dwellings and make our hearts tremble; God hath sent some angels into the world whose office it is to refresh the sorrows of the poor and to lighten the eyes of the disconsolate; He hath made some creatures whose powers are chiefly ordained to comfort; wine, and oil, and society, cordials, and variety; and time itself is checkered with black and white; stay but till to-morrow, and your present sorrow will be weary and will lie down to rest. But this is : not all the third person of the holy Trinity is known to us by the name and dignity of the "Holy Ghost, the Comforter;" and God glories in the appellative that He is "the Father of mercies, and the God of all comfort;" and therefore to minister in the office is to become like God, and to imitate the charities of heaven. And God hath fitted mankind for it: he most needs it, and he feels his brother's wants by his own experience; and God hath given us speech, and the endearments of society, and pleasantness of conversation, and powers of seasonable discourse, arguments to allay the sorrow by abating our apprehensions and taking out the sting or telling the periods of comfort, or exciting hope, or urging a precept, and reconciling our affections, and reciting promises, or telling stories of the divine mercy, or changing it into duty, or making the burden less by comparing it with greater, or by proving it to be less than we deserve, and that it is so intended, and may become the instrument of virtue. And certain it is that as nothing can better do it, so there is nothing greater for which God made our tongues, next to reciting His praises, than to minister comfort to a weary soul. And what greater measure can we have than that we should bring joy to our brother, who with his dreary eyes looks to heaven and round about, and cannot find so much rest as to lay his eyelids close together: than that thy tongue should be tuned with heavenly accents, and make the weary soul to listen for light and ease, and when he perceives that there is such a thing in the world and in the order of things as comfort and joy, to begin to break out from the prison of his sorrows at the door of sighs and tears, and by little and little melt into showers and refreshment? This is glory to thy voice, and employment fit for the brightest angel. But so have I seen the sun kiss the frozen earth which was bound up with the images of death and the colder breath of the north; and then the waters break from their enclosures, and melt with joy, and run in useful channels; and the flies do rise again from their little graves in walls, and dance awhile in the air to tell that there is joy within, and that the great mother of creatures will open the stock of her new refreshment, become useful to mankind, and sing praises to her Redeemer: so is the heart of a sorrowful man under the discourses of a wise comforter; he breaks from the despairs of the grave and the fetters and chains of sorrow; he blesses God, and he blesses thee, and he feels his life returning; for to be miserable is death, but nothing is life but to be comforted; and God is pleased with no music from below so much as in the thanksgiving songs of relieved widows, of supported orphans, of rejoicing, and comforted, and thankful persons. This part of communication does the work of God and of our neighbours, and bears us to heaven in streams of joy made by the overflowings of our brother's comfort. It is a fearful thing to see a man despairing: none knows the sorrow and the intolerable anguish but themselves, and they that are damned; and so are all the loads of a wounded |