WHAT FAMOUS THEOLOGIANS HAD TO SAY ABOUT

TONGUES/LANGUAGES

About 450, AUGUSTINE - PRE-CATHOLIC:  "Suppose we advise all our brethren not to teach their children [to speak their native language by example] because on the outpouring of the Holy Spirit the apostles immediately began to speak the languages of every race; and warn every one who has not had a like experience [to learn their own language] that he need not consider himself a Christian, or may at least doubt whether he has yet received the Holy Spirit?  No."  (On Christian Doctrine, Preface, Point 5)

About 1270, THOMAS AQUINAS - CATHOLIC:  "Both Paul and the other apostles were divinely instructed in the languages of all nations sufficiently for the requirements of the teaching of the faith."  (Summa Theologica, Secunda Secundae Partis)

About 1536 and 1543, JOHN CALVIN - REFORMED CHURCHES: "Those who, rejecting Scripture, imagine that they have some peculiar way of penetrating to God, are to be deemed not so much under the influence of error as madness. For certain giddy men have lately appeared who, while they make a great display of the superiority of the spirit....The office of the Spirit promised to us is not to form new and unheard-of revelations....What can be plainer than this prohibition - 'let not prayers or thanksgivings be offered up in public except in the vernacular tongue'....We see, then, how Satan sports among them with impunity"� (Institutes of the Christian Religion, Book I, 9:1; and Commentary on the Epistles of Paul the Apostle, I Corinthians 14:16).

1674, JOHN BUNYAN - BAPTIST:  "But the devil, that he might...render the scriptures also odious and low, telling them of the 'scriptures' within; which Christ never taught, nor yet his disciples: But they...have given themselves over rather to follow the suggestions of the devil than the holy scriptures....But this design the devil carries on by pretending to show them a more excellent way which they may attain to...from the light within them." (THE WORKS OF JOHN BUNYAN, VOL. II, pg. 136, "Some Gospel Truths Opened According to Scriptures").

1861 and 1866, CHARLES SPURGEON - BAPTIST: "But do you know the effect of an experimental [experiential] minister?...This is their style: 'Except thou art daily feeling the utter rottenness of thine heart....Except thou abidest on the dunghill...thou art no child of God.' Who told you that?....Those who pray unintelligible prayers, prayers in a foreign tongue, prayers which they do not understand: we know without a moment's discussion...the prayer which is not even understood cannot be a prayer in the Spirit, for even the man's own spirit does not enter into it, how then can the Spirit of God be there?"  (Sermons in the Metropolitan Pulpit, pg. 173, and pg. 615.