Government of the Tongue

Of the Use of Speech.

Man at his first creation was substituted by God as his Viceregent, to receive the homage, and enjoy the services of all inferior beings: nay, farther was endowed with excellencies fit to maintain the port of so vast an Empire. Yet those very excellencies, as they qualified him for dominion, so they unfitted him for satisfaction or acquiescence in those his vassals: the dignity of his nature set him above the society or converse of mere animals; so that in all the pomp of his royalty, amidst all the throng and variety of creatures, he still remained solitary. But God who knew what an appetite of society he had implanted in him, judged this no agreeable state for him, It is not meet that man should be alone. Gen. 2. 18. And as in the universal frame of nature, he engrafted such an abhorrence of vacuity, that all creatures do rather submit to a preternatural motion than admit it, so, in this empty, this destitute condition of man, he relieved him by a miraculous expedient, divided him that he might unite him, and made one part of him an associate for the other.