doubt but He intended them for our gratification as well as for the
support and continuance of our being. The secondary use of speech
is to please and be entertaining to each other in conversation.
This is in every respect allowable and right; it unites men closer
in alliances and friendships; gives us a fellow-feeling of the
prosperity and unhappiness of each other; and is in several respects
servicable to virtue, and to promote good behaviour in the world.
And provided there be not too much time spent in it, if it were
considered only in the way of gratification and delight, men must
have strange notion of God and of religion to think that He can be
offended with it, or that it is any way inconsistent with the
strictest virtue. But the truth is, such sort of conversation,
though it has no particular good tendency, yet it has a general good
one; it is social and friendly, and tends to promote humanity, good-
nature, and civility.

As the end and use, so likewise the abuse of speech, relates to the
one or other of these: either to business or to conversation. As
to the former: deceit in the management of business and affairs
does not properly belong to the subject now before us: though one
may just mention that multitude, that heedless number of words with
which business is perplexed, where a much fewer would, as it should
seem, better serve the purpose; but this must be left to those who
understand the matter. The government of the tongue, considered as
a subject of itself, relates chiefly to conversation; to that kind
of discourse which usually fills up the time spent in friendly
meetings and visits of civility. And the danger is, lest persons
entertain themselves and others at the expense of their wisdom and
their virtue, and to the injury or offence of their neighbour. If
they will observe and keep clear of these, they may be as free and