Matthew 12:37

For by thy words thou shalt be justified, and by thy words thou shalt be condemned.

Ver. 37. For by thy words thou shalt be justified] Our Saviour insists upon this subject because by words they had sinned against the Holy Ghost. A man's most and worst sins be his words. St Paul, making the anatomy of a natural man, stands more on the organ of speech than all the other members, Romans 3:4; St James saith, "that the tongue is" not a city or country, but "a world of iniquity," James 3:6. It can run all the world over, and bite at everybody, when the devil fires it especially. Peraldus (tom. i. 264) reckons up twenty-four different sins of the tongue: he might have made them more. God hath set a double hedge before it, of teeth and lips, to keep it up; he hath also placed it between the head and the heart that it might take counsel of both. Children he will not suffer to speak till they have understanding and wit; and those that are deaf are also dumb, because they cannot hear instruction, nor learn wisdom, that they may speak advisedly.