Homilies on Second Corinthians

⁴ Will you then learn how great an evil is filthy talking? See how the hearers blush at your indecency. For what is viler than a filthy talker? What more infamous? For such thrust themselves into the rank of buffoons and of prostituted women, yea rather these have more shame than you. How can you teach a wife to be modest when by such language you are training her to proceed unto lasciviousness? Better vent rottenness from the mouth than a filthy word. Now if your mouth have an ill-odor, you partake not even of the common meats; when then you had so foul a stink in your soul, tell me, do you dare to partake of mysteries?

Did any one take a dirty vessel and set it upon the table, you would have beaten him with clubs and driven him out: yet God at His own table, (for His table our mouth is when filled with thanksgiving,) when you pour out words more disgusting than any unclean vessel, tell me, do you think that you provoke not? And how is this possible? For nothing does so exasperate the holy and pure as do such words; nothing makes men so impudent and shameless as to say and listen to such; nothing does so unstring the sinews of modesty as the flame which these kindle.

God has set perfumes in your mouth, but you store up words of fouler odor than a corpse, and destroyest the soul itself and makest it incapable of motion. For when you insult, this is not the voice of the soul, but of anger; when you talk filthily, it is lewdness, and not she that spoke; when you detract, it is envy; when you scheme, covetousness. These are not her works, but those of the affections and the diseases belonging to her. As then corruption comes not simply of the body, but of the death and the passion which is thus in the body; so also, in truth, these things come of the passions which grow upon the soul.

For if you will hear a voice from a living soul, hear Paul saying, “Having food and covering, we shall be therewith content:” and “Godliness is great gain:” and, “The world is crucified unto me, and I unto the world.” Hear Peter saying, “Silver and gold have I none, but such as I have, give I you.” Hear Job giving thanks and saying, “The Lord gave, and the Lord has taken away.” These things are the words of a living soul, of a soul discharging the functions proper to it. Thus also Jacob said, “If the Lord will give me bread to eat and raiment to put on.” Thus also Joseph, “How shall I do this wickedness, and sin before God?” But not so that barbarian woman; but as one drunken and insane, so spoke she, saying, “Lie with me.” These things then knowing, let us earnestly covet the living soul, let us flee the dead one, that we may also obtain the life to come; of which may all we be made partakers, through the grace and love toward men of our Lord Jesus Christ, though Whom and with Whom, to the Father, together with the Holy Ghost, be glory, might, honor, now and for ever, and world without end.

Amen.