John Chrysostom, on Ps 56:4

“He hath sent from heaven and delivered me: he hath made them a reproach that trod upon me. God hath sent his mercy and his truth,”

“Casting away therefore all anxiety and superfluous care, let us return to ourselves; and let us adorn the body and the soul with the ornament of virtue; converting our bodily members into instruments of righteousness and not instruments of sin.And first of all, let us discipline our tongue to be the minister of the grace of the Spirit, expelling from the mouth all bitterness and malice and the practice of using disgraceful words. For it is in our power to make each one of our members an instrument of wickedness or of righteousness. Hear then how people make the tongue an instrument, some of sin, others of righteousness! "Their tongue is a sharp sword." But another speaks thus of his own tongue: "My tongue is the pen of a ready writer." The former worked destruction; the latter wrote the divine law. So one was a sword, the other a pen, not according to its own nature but according to the choice of those who employed it. For the nature of this tongue and of that was the same, but the operation was not the same.”

Imported from an open dataset — not yet checked against the printed edition.