Observe these qualifications, and your mirth and sporting talk will not be idle. 1. Let it be such and so much as is useful to maintain that cheerfulness of mind and alacrity of spirits, which is profitable to your health and duty; for if bodily recreations be lawful, then tongue recreations are lawful when they are accommodate to their end. 2. Let your speech be savoury, seasoned with salt, and not corrupt and rotten communication: jest not with filthiness or sin. 3. Let it be harmless to others: make not yourselves merry with the sins or miseries of other men. Jest not to their wrong. 4. Let it be seasonable, and not when another frame of mind is more convenient, nor when graver or weightier discourse should take place. 5. Let it be moderate and not excessive, either wasting time in vain, or tending to habituate the mind of the speakers or hearers to levity, or to estrange them from things that should be preferred. 6. See that all your mirth and speech be sanctified by a holy end; that your intent in all be to whet your spirits and cheer up and fit yourselves for the service of God, as you do in eating and drinking, and all other things. 7. And mix (with cautelous reverence) some serious things, that the end and use be not forgotten, and your mirth may not be altogether as empty and fruitless as that of the unsanctified is. Sporting, pleasant, and recreating talk is not vain, but lawful upon these conditions. 8. Still remembering that the most holy and profitable discourse must be most pleasant to us, and we must not, through a weariness of it, divert to carnal mirth, as more desirable, but only to natural honest mirth as a necessary concomitant to exhilarate the spirits.[524]
[Sidenote: What is idle talk. The sorts of it.]
Idle or vain words, then, are such as are unprofitable and tend not to do good.[525] I here forbear to speak of those idle words which are also worse than vain, as mentioned before among the sins of the tongue. Idle words are, 1. Either simply such which tend to no good at all. 2. Or comparatively such; which are about some small or inconsiderable good, when you should be speaking of greater things: the former sort are always idle, and therefore always sinful; the latter sort are sometimes lawful in themselves, that is, when greater matters are not to be talked of: in its season it is lawful to speak about the saving of a penny, or a point, or a pin; but out of season, when greater matters are in hand, this is but idle, sinful talk.
Also there is a great deal of difference between now and then an idle word, and a babbling, prating custom, by which it becometh the daily practice of some loose-tongued persons, so that the greater part of the words of all their lives are merely vain.
The particular kinds of idle talk are scarce to be numbered. Some of them are these.
1. When the tongue is like a vagrant beggar or masterless dog, that is never in the way, and never out of the way, being left to talk at random about any unprofitable matter that comes before it; and such will never want matter to talk of; every thing they see or hear is the subject of their chat; and one word begetteth occasion and matter for another, without end.
2. Another sort of idle talk is the vain discourses (by word or writing) of some learned men, in which they bestow an excessive multitude of words about some small impertinent thing; not to edify, but to show their wit:[526] which Seneca reprehends at large.
3. Another sort of idle talk is vain and immoderate disputings, about the smaller circumstances of religion, or frequent discourses about such unedifying things while greater matters should be talked of. "But avoid foolish questions, and genealogies, and contentions, and strivings about the law, for they are unprofitable and vain," Tit. iii. 9. "Now the end of the commandment is charity, out of a pure heart, and of a good conscience, and of faith unfeigned: from which some having swerved, have turned aside unto vain jangling, desiring to be teachers of the law, understanding neither what they say, nor whereof they affirm," 1 Tim. i. 5-7. "O Timothy, keep that which is committed to thy trust, avoiding profane and vain babblings, and opposition of sciences falsely so called; which some professing, have erred concerning the faith," 1 Tim. vi. 20, 21. "But shun profane and vain babblings; for they will increase unto more ungodliness," 2 Tim. ii. 16. "There are many unruly and vain talkers," &c. Tit. i. 10, 11.