The Instructor 2.7.53

Away, away from us also with mockery, the beginning of insolence, from which quarrels, fights, and enmities swell. We said that insolence is the servant of drunkenness. A human being is judged not only by deeds but also by words. “At a banquet,” it says, “do not rebuke your neighbor, and do not speak a word of reproach to him.” For if we are commanded above all to keep company with the holy, it is a sin to mock the holy one. “From the mouth of fools,” says Scripture, “is a rod of insolence,” calling the rod a stepping stone of insolence, on which insolence leans and rests. So here too I admire the apostle, who urges us not to utter coarse jests or unfitting words. For if our gatherings for feasts are for love's sake, and the end of a banquet is friendliness toward those present, and food and drink follow love, how should we not conduct ourselves rationally? Nor must we fail because of love. For if we come together to increase our goodwill to one another, how can we stir up enmities by mockery? It is better to keep silent than to contradict, adding sin to ignorance. “Blessed” truly “is the man who has not slipped with his mouth and has not been pricked with the grief of sin,” either having repented of what he sinned in speaking, or having spoken so as to grieve no one. In general, young men and young women should for the most part keep away from such feasts, so that they may not fall in matters where they ought not. For unaccustomed sounds and unseemly sights, while faith is still tossing in them, fan their minds into flame, and the instability of their age helps the proneness of desire; and sometimes they become the cause of others' falls, displaying the dangerous bloom of their youth.