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"Therefore we ought to give the more earnest heed to the things which we have heard, lest at any time we should let them slip. For if the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recompence of reward; How shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him" Hebrews 2:1-3 (KJV)

LIBRARY BOOKS: SERMONS on Christian Living

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The Government of the Tongue

by

Richard Allestree

Updated & Modernized
from the 1675 Oxford Edition
with Annotations by
H&F Books
2021

Free Pre-Print Edition

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.

PREVIEW BOOK CONTENT:

"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."

"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."

"Amidst the universal depra-vation of our faculties, there is no faculty more notorious than that of speech. Amidst that infini-ty of words in which we exhaust our breath, how few words are there that do at all correspond with the origi-nal 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 breth-ren 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, Jer-emiah 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."

"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 dis-course: 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."

"In all detraction, there is some mixture of pride, and therefore I suppose a caution against pride is so generally seasonable that it may well lead the vanguard of all other advice that can be given in this matter."

"Certainly there is nothing that does so gratify and so regale a haughty spirit as usurped sovereignty over their neighbors."

"Such bitter invectives against other people's faults and indul-gence or palliation of their own only shows that their zeal lies in their affections and that they consider not so much what is done as who does it."

"And if you must speak of other people's faults, 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. But alas people arrange the matter in such a way—as if they feared losing an opportunity to make a great outcry—that they will tell the whole world, but not that person that it most concerns. Indeed it is a deplorable thing to see how universally this requisite Christian duty is neglected, and to that neglect we may in a great degree impute that strange overflowing of detraction among us."

"It is the peculiar insolence of those degenerate Christians who surely cannot be thought to be in earnest when they speak of singing Hallelujahs to God in the next world, while they entertain him here only with the sullen noise of murmuring and repining. For we are not to think that heaven will suddenly metamorphose us, and turn our exclamations and wild clamors against the will of God towards us in par-ticular into lauds and magnificats of the same. Heaven will indeed perfect and crown those graces which were inchoate and begun in us here, but no person's conversion will follow upon his or her entering into heaven; for Christ expressly told us that, 'except we be converted, we shall not enter into the kingdom of heaven.' Thus, if we go on in the future in our froward dis-content, that discontent will associate us with those with whom is 'Weeping and wailing and gnashing of teeth.'"

"Faults of the tongue are the harder 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 em-ployments, 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."

"We should be careful to improve every opportunity for directing our tongues to pay our more immediate homage to God through the duties of prayers and praises, making them not only the expressions of our pious affections, but the promoters of godly prayer and praise in others. And indeed that person can scarcely be thought to be in earnest, who prays, 'Hallowed be thy name,' and yet does not as much endeavor to glorify God's name in the company of others as he does solicit it from God."

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The Government of the Tongue
by Richard Allestree
Updated & Modernized
from the 1675 Oxford Edition
with Annotations by
H&F Books 2021 (1.3MB)

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The Updated Edition of the
Government of the Tongue
by Richard Allestree
Originally Published at Oxford 1675.
Edited, Modernized, and Annotated
by H&F Books 2022

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