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The Updated Edition of the Government of the Tongue by Richard Allestree (2011 Paperback Book Edition)
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The Updated Edition of the Government of the Tongue
"Death and Life are in the power of the Tongue." Proverbs 18:21

by Richard Allestree

About the Author:

Richard Allestree (1619-1681) was an English churchman, chaplain to the King of England, Regius Professor of Divinity, and provost of Eton College in 1665.

Book Description: (back cover info)

"Faults of the tongue as are the hardest to avoid because they are exemplified to us every day in common practice, and some of them are even recommended as reputable and ingenious. And it is a strange insinuative power that example and custom have over us. We see this influence in every trivial secular instance in our every habit. And for this very reason, all sobriety and strict virtue now lies under heavy prejudice, and no part of that virtue is more prejudiced than that of the tongue, which current and common custom has now enfranchised from all the bonds that moralists and preachers of the Gospel had laid upon it. But the greater the difficulties are, the more it ought to awaken our diligence, for if we are loose and careless, odds are that we will be carried away with the rest. We had better therefore fix ourselves. And by sober recollection of the ends for which speech was given us and the account we must one day give of our use of it, we had better impress upon ourselves the baseness and the danger of misemploying our tongue in this use of speech."

"The tongue is a busy and active part of us that can scarcely be kept from motion, and if that activity is not resolved to good employments, it will be practicing itself upon bad. For the mind is like the stomach in requiring wholesome nourishment, and if it is not supplied with that which is wholesome, it will at last indulge in those things to which the fleshly nature is most inclined. So that, if in our conversation we do not interchange sober and useful notions between us, we will at best only traffic in toys and baubles and most commonly, infection and poison. Whoever would keep their tongue from exposing themself or others to sin, must tune it to a quite contrary key by making it an instrument and an incentive to virtue."

"And if you must speak of other people's faults of the tongue, let it not be to defame but to amend; let us convert our detraction and backbiting into admonition and fraternal correction. If people had the zeal for virtue to which they pretend when they inveigh against vice, they would surely take this course of action, for this method alone provides for the possibility of reforming the offender."

Paperback Edition Details:

Originally Published at Oxford 1675
Edited, Modernized, and Annotated by H&F Books
2022

Publisher: Hail & Fire

Page Count: 218 pages

Book Binding: Paperback (US Trade Paperback)

Product Size: 5" x 8" x .5" inches

Interior Color: Black and White

Language(s): English

ISBN-10: 0982804377

ISBN-13/EAN13: 978-0982804377 (978-0-9828043-7-7)

Book Category: Religion / Christian Life / Personal Growth

Table of Contents:

Preview: Quotations by Richard Allestree, 1675 - page v.

Preface to the 1675 Edition - page ix.

Chapter 1: The Use of Speech - page 1.

Chapter 2: The Manifold Abuse of Speech - page 5.

Chapter 3: Atheistic Discourse - page 11.

Chapter 4: Detraction - page 31.

Chapter 5: Lying Defamation - page 39.

Chapter 6: Uncharitable Truth - page 51.

Chapter 7: Scoffing and Derision - page 93.

Chapter 8: Flattery - page 113.

Chapter 9: Boasting - page 129.

Chapter 10: Querulousness - page 149.

Chapter 11: Positive Authoritativeness - page 161.

Chapter 12: Obscene Talk - page 175.

Chapter 13: The Close - page 177.

Quotations and Excerpts: (from this book)

"It is very observable that God, who 'made of one blood all nations of the earth,' Acts 17:26, has so equally distributed all the most valuable privileges of human nature, himself designing to preclude all insulting of one man over another."
~ Richard Allestree
Quote on the Racial Equality.

"I advise those who would judge others to practice it first at home, within their own hearts, and if they would confine themselves to that until there is nothing left to correct, I do not doubt that their neighbor will be free of danger from their detractions."
~ Richard Allestree
Quote on First Judging Ourselves (Matthew 7:3-5).

"Amidst the universal depravation of our faculties, there is no faculty more notorious than that of speech. Amidst that infinity of words in which we exhaust our breath, how few words are there that do at all correspond with the original designation of speech; nay, which do not flatly contradict it? To what unholy, uncharitable purposes is the useful faculty of speech perverted? That which was meant to serve as the perfume of the tabernacle, to send up the incense of praise and prayer, now exhales impious vapors to eclipse, if it were possible, the Father of Light. That which should be the storehouse of relief and refreshment to our brethren has become a magazine of all offensive weapons against them, 'spears and arrows and sharp swords,' as the Psalmist says. We not only fall by the slipperiness of our tongues, but we deliberately discipline and train them to mischief. We 'bend our tongues as our bows for lies,' as the prophet says, Jeremiah 9:3. And in a word, what God affirmed of the old world, in relation to thoughts, 'the imagination of the thoughts' of man, is too applicable to our words: they 'are only evil and that continually,' Genesis 6:5; and that which was intended for the instrument—the aid—of human society has become the disturber of human society."

~ Richard Allestree

"Aright speech tends to the glory of God and the good of others. But this is not to be understood so restrictively as if nothing but religion or the necessary concerns of human life may lawfully be brought into discourse: some portion is to be indulged to common civility; more yet to the intimacies and endearments of friendship; and a suitable portion to those recreative discourses which maintain the cheerfulness of society."

~ Richard Allestree

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