"The tongue may be employed about, and made to serve all the purposes of vice, in tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice"
About this Quote
A clergyman warning about the “tongue” lands like a sermon, but Butler’s edge is sharper than mere moral scolding. He isn’t treating speech as casual social noise; he’s treating it as an instrument - portable, ubiquitous, and uniquely capable of turning private vice into public damage. The line’s power comes from its cool catalog of abuses: “tempting and deceiving, in perjury and injustice.” Each phrase tightens the screw. It moves from seduction (tempting) to manipulation (deceiving) to outright legal and civic catastrophe (perjury, injustice). The subtext is that sin doesn’t stay safely inside the sinner. It travels through language, recruits others, and contaminates institutions.
Butler is writing in an English world where reputation, credit, and legal testimony were social infrastructure. Speech was how you got a job, kept your standing, and made your case in court - and thus how you could ruin someone else. “Tongue” is synecdoche with teeth: not just gossip, but the whole economy of persuasion. That’s why “employed about” matters; it suggests the tongue is busy, industrious, always on assignment. Vice isn’t lazy. It multitasks.
As an Anglican moralist, Butler’s intent is pastoral and political at once: discipline your speech because language is the quickest route from inner disorder to outward cruelty. He frames verbal sins as not merely impolite but structurally corrupting, the kind of wrongdoing that makes communities ungovernable and justice unreliable. In an age of expanding print culture and public debate, it’s also a quiet reminder that eloquence is not evidence of virtue; it may be vice’s best disguise.
Butler is writing in an English world where reputation, credit, and legal testimony were social infrastructure. Speech was how you got a job, kept your standing, and made your case in court - and thus how you could ruin someone else. “Tongue” is synecdoche with teeth: not just gossip, but the whole economy of persuasion. That’s why “employed about” matters; it suggests the tongue is busy, industrious, always on assignment. Vice isn’t lazy. It multitasks.
As an Anglican moralist, Butler’s intent is pastoral and political at once: discipline your speech because language is the quickest route from inner disorder to outward cruelty. He frames verbal sins as not merely impolite but structurally corrupting, the kind of wrongdoing that makes communities ungovernable and justice unreliable. In an age of expanding print culture and public debate, it’s also a quiet reminder that eloquence is not evidence of virtue; it may be vice’s best disguise.
Quote Details
| Topic | Honesty & Integrity |
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