[7.] Bearing in mind these things therefore let us have a care of our own members, and not sharpen the tongue against one another, nor speak words “which may do hurt,” undermining the fame of our neighbor, and as in war and battle, giving and receiving blows. For what after all is the good of fasting or watching, when the tongue is drunken, and feasts itself at a table more unclean than of dog’s flesh; when it is grown ravening after blood, and pours out filth, and makes the mouth a channel of a sewer, nay rather something more abominable than that? For that which proceeds from thence pollutes the body: but what comes from the tongue often suffocates the soul.