Avoid all revengeful and provoking words

‘Avoid all revengeful and provoking words.’ When the poison of asps is under men’s lips, no wonder if the hearers’ minds that are not sufficiently antidoted against it, fester. Death and life are in the power of the tongue.

Richard Baxter, William Orme, The Practical Works of the Rev. Richard Baxter, vol. 6 (London: James Duncan, 1830), 270.

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