Secrecy, silence, and the mouth’s lock

Meaning

The final counsel to keep silence concerns right use of a gift already received. A firm lock before the mouth figures control of speech, while talkativeness is reidentified more sharply as pride. The threatened harm includes danger before people and God, temporal loss and eternal ruin. English “keep silence concerning it” preserves the object of discretion rather than demanding silence about every subject. The warning exists beside the author’s own act of publication, so it should not be simplified into a ban on all teaching. Its concern is boastful or reckless disclosure detached from the humility and appropriate limits claimed for the treatise itself.