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Bible Dictionaries
Gift of Tongues
Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary
or an ability given to the Apostles and others of readily and intelligibly speaking a variety of languages which they had never learned. This was a glorious and decisive attestation to the Gospel, as well as a suitable, and, indeed, in their circumstances, a necessary qualification for the mission for which the Apostles and their coadjutors were designed. Nor is there any reason, with Dr. Middleton, to understand it as merely an occasional gift, so that a person might speak a language most fluently one hour, and be entirely ignorant of it the next; which neither agrees with what is said of the abuse of it, nor would it have been sufficient to answer the end proposed, Acts 2. Some appear to have been gifted with one tongue, others with more. To St. Paul this endowment was vouchsafed in a more liberal degree, than to many others; for, as to the Corinthians, who had received the gift of tongues, he says, "that he spake with tongues more than they all."
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Watson, Richard. Entry for 'Gift of Tongues'. Richard Watson's Biblical & Theological Dictionary. https://www.studylight.org/dictionaries/eng/wtd/g/gift-of-tongues.html. 1831-2.
