32. Manifestly also in the
Gospel we find the mouth of the heart: so that
in one place the Lord is found to have mentioned the mouth both of
the body and of the heart, where he saith, “Are ye also yet
without understanding? Do ye not yet understand, that whatsoever
entereth in at the mouth, goeth into the belly, and is cast out
into the draught? but those things which proceed out of the mouth
come forth from the heart, and they defile the man. For out of the
heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, fornications,
thefts, false witness, blasphemies: these are the things which
defile a man.”2357
Here if thou understand but one
mouth, that of the body, how wilt thou understand, “Those things
which proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the
heart;” since
spitting also and vomiting proceed out of the mouth? Unless
peradventure a man is but then
defiled when he eateth aught
unclean, but is
defiled when he
vomits it up. But if this be most
absurd, it remains that we understand the mouth of the
heart to
have been
expounded by the
Lord, when He saith, “The things which
proceed out of the mouth, come forth from the
heart.” For being
that
theft also can be, and often is, perpetrated with
silence of
the bodily voice and mouth; one must be out of his
mind so to
understand it as then to account a person to be contaminated by the
sin of
theft, when he confesses or makes it known, but when he
commits it and holds his
peace, then to think him
undefiled. But,
in
truth, if we refer what is said to the mouth of the heart, no
sin whatever can be committed tacitly: for it is not committed
unless it proceed from that mouth which is within.
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