changing effeminate manners to softness. We must consider, too, how consequently freedom of speech leads impropriety on to filthy speaking.
“And he uttered a word which had been better unsaid.”[513]
Especially, therefore, in liquor crafty men’s characters are wont to be seen through, stripped as they are of their mask through the caitiff licence of intoxication, through which reason, weighed down in the soul itself by drunkenness, is lulled to sleep, and unruly passions are roused, which overmaster the feebleness of the mind.
CHAPTER VI.
ON FILTHY SPEAKING.
From filthy speaking we ourselves must entirely abstain, and stop the mouths of those who practise it by stern looks and averting the face, and by what we call making a mock of one: often also by a harsher mode of speech. “For what proceedeth out of the mouth,” He says, “defileth a man,”[514]—shows him to be unclean, and heathenish, and untrained, and licentious, and not select, and proper, and honourable, and temperate.
And as a similar rule holds with regard to hearing and seeing in the case of what is obscene, the divine Instructor, following the same course with both, arrays those children who are engaged in the struggle in words of modesty, as ear-guards, so that the pulsation of fornication may not penetrate to the bruising of the soul; and He directs the eyes to the sight of what is honourable, saying that it is better to make a slip with the feet than with the eyes. This filthy speaking the apostle beats off, saying, “Let no corrupt communication proceed out of your mouth, but what is good.”[515] And again, “As becometh saints, let not filthiness be named among you, nor foolish talking, nor jesting, which things are not seemly, but rather giving of thanks.”[516] And if “he that calls his brother a fool be in danger of the judgment,” what shall we pronounce regarding him who speaks what is foolish? Is it not written respecting such: “Whosoever shall speak an idle word, shall give an account to the Lord in the day of judgment?”[517] And again, “By thy speech thou shalt be justified,” He says, “and by thy speech thou shalt be condemned.”[518] What, then, are the salutary ear-guards, and what the regulations for slippery eyes? Conversations with the righteous, preoccupying and forearming the ears against those that would lead away from the truth.
“Evil communications corrupt good manners,”
says Poetry. More nobly the apostle says, “Be haters of the evil; cleave to the good.”[519] For he who associates with the saints shall be sanctified. From shameful things addressed to the ears, and words and sights, we must entirely abstain. And much more must we keep pure from shameful deeds: on the one hand, from exhibiting and exposing certain parts of the body which we ought not; and on the other, from inspection of the forbidden parts. For the modest son could not bear to look on the shameful exposure of the righteous man; and modesty covered what intoxication exposed—the spectacle of the transgression of ignorance.[520] No less ought we to keep pure from calumnious reports, to which the ears of those who have believed in Christ ought to be inaccessible.
It is on this account, as appears to me, that the Instructor does not permit us to give utterance to aught unseemly, fortifying us at an early stage against licentiousness. For He is admirable always at cutting out the roots of sins, such as, “Thou shalt not commit adultery,” by “Thou shalt not lust.”[521] For adultery is the fruit of lust, which is the evil root. And so likewise also in this instance the Instructor censures licence in names, and thus cuts off the licentious intercourse of excess. For licence in names produces the desire of being indecorous in conduct; and the observance of modesty in names is a training in resistance to lasciviousness. We have shown in a more exhaustive treatise, that neither in the names nor in the members of intercourse and nuptial embraces, to which appellations not in common use are applied, is there the designation of what is really obscene.