The mischiefs of self-ignorance and the benefits of self-acquaintance opened in divers sermons at…

Nature hath made the tongue the index of the mind: especially to express the matters of most urgency and concernment. Do you keep silent ordinarily the matters which you highliest esteem? which you oftenest think of? which you take your life and happiness to consist in? and which you are deeplyest ⟨p. 178⟩affected with, and prefer before all other matters of the world? What a shameful pretence is it, for those that are dumb to Prayer and holy conference, for want of any due sense of their condition, or Love to God, which should open their lips, to take on them it is for want of tongues or because their Prudence directeth them to silence? When they hold not their tongues about those matters, which they must confess are ten thousand fold less regardable; they can discourse unweariedly about their wealth, their sport, their friend, their honour, because they Love them; And if a man should here tell them, that the Heart is not to be opened or exercised by the tongue, they would think he knew not the natural use of Heart or Tongue: And yet while they pretend to love God above all, they have neither skill nor will to make expression of it; you strike them dumb when you turn the stream of conference that way; and you may almost as well bid them speak in a strange language, as Pray to God from the sense of their necessities, and yet they say, their Hearts are good.

Nature hath made the tongue the index of the mind: especially to express the matters of most urgency and concernment. Do you keep silent ordinarily the matters which you highliest esteem? which you oftenest think of? which you take your life and happiness to consist in? and which you are deeplyest ⟨p. 178⟩affected with, and prefere before all other matters of the world? What a shamefull pretence is it, for those that are dumb to Prayer and holy conference, for want of any due sense of their condition, or Love to God, which should open their lips, to take on them it is for want of tongues or because their Prudence directeth them to silence? When they hold not their tongues about those matters, which they must confess are ten thousand fold less regardable; they can discourss unwearyedly about their wealth, their sport, their friend, their honour, because they Love them; And if a man should here tell them, that the Heart is not to be opened or exercised by the tongue, they would thinke he knew not the naturall use of Heart or Tongue: And yet while they pretend to love God above all, they have neither skill nor will to make expression of it; you strike them dumb when you turne the streame of conference that way; and you may almost as well bid them speak in a strange language, as Pray to God from the sense of their necessities, and yet they say, their Hearts are good.