should bridle your tongues, that it is a great point of that
Christian victory over the world to tame and danton(433) that undantoned
wild beast, to quench that fire brand of hell? Do ye not all know that we
should be swift to hear, slow to speak, and slow to wrath? And as the
apostle Paul speaks on another subject, "Doth not even nature itself teach
you when you have but one tongue, and two ears, that ye should hear much,
and speak little?" Are not our ears open, and our tongue enclosed and shut
up, to teach us to be more ready to hear than to speak? Now I say, till
Christians learn to practise these things that are without all
controversy, you may make it your account never to want controversy, and
never to get clearness. For to what purpose should more light be revealed,
when that which is revealed is to no purpose?

But it is in vain to think to reform the tongue, till you have the heart
first reformed. They say the belly hath no ears. Truly the tongue is all
tongue, and has no ears to take an admonition or instruction. We must,
then, with the apostle, retire into the heart, and abate from the
abundance of the superfluity and naughtiness that is within; and therefore
our apostle descends to the cure of pride, envy and strife in the heart,
that are fountains of all that pestiferous flood which flows out of every
man's mouth. "Is there any wise man among you?" &c. And indeed this is the
orderly proceeding both of nature and grace. Nature begins within to probe
among the superfluous and noisome humours which abound in the body, and
desolate the members, and doth not think it sufficient to apply external
plasters. Grace must begin within too, to purge the heart, for out of the
abundance of the heart the mouth speaks, the eye looks, and the feet walk.
If there be no destroyer in the members or outward man, it is not the
preserving of rules and cautions that will suffice to restrain, to abate,
or to cure, but the disease must be ripped up to the bottom, the cause
found within, as our apostle doth here. Hence, says he, proceed all these
feverish distempers among you, your hot and passionate words, your evil
speakings and reproachings, your contentions and wars about matters either
civil or religious. Whence are all these? From a vain persuasion of
wisdom, from a foolish imagination of some excellency in yourselves, and
some inward affection to be accounted something of among men. "Who is a
wise man," &c. You would be accoun