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The "Summa Theologica" of St. Thomas Aquinas
The Summa Theologica of St Thomas Aquinas Author:Thomas Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: QUESTION CLXXVI. OF THE GRATUITOUS GRACES WHICH PERTAIN TO SPEECH, AND IN THE FIRST PLACE, OF THE GRACE OF TONGUES. (In Two Articles.) We must now... more » consider those gratuitous graces that pertain to speech, and (i) the grace of tongues; (2) the grace of the word of wisdom and knowledge. Under the first head there are two points of inquiry: (i) Whether by the grace of tongues a man acquires the knowledge of all languages ? (2) Of the comparison between this gift and the grace of prophecy. First Article. Whether Those Who Received The Gift Of Tongues Spoke In Every Language ? We proceed thus to the First Article :— Objection i. It seems that those who received the gift of tongues did not speak 'in every language. For that which is granted to certain persons by the divine power is the best of its kind: thus our Lord turned the water into good wine, as stated in Jo. ii. 10. Now those who had the gift of tongues spoke better in their own language; since a gloss on Heb. i. says that it is not surprising that the epistle to the Hebrews is more graceful in style than the other epistles, since it is natural for a man to have more command over his own than over a strange language. For the Apostle wrote the other epistles in a foreign, namely the Greek, idiom; whereas he wrote this in the Hebrew tongue. Therefore the apostles did not receive the knowledge of all languages by a gratuitous grace. Obj. 2. Further, Nature does not employ many means where one is sufficient; and much less does God Whose work is more orderly than nature's. Now God could make His disciples to be understood by all, while speaking one tongue: hence a gloss on Acts ii. 6, Every man heard them speak in his own tongue, says that they spoke in every tongue, or speaking in their own (namely th...« less