For if I pray in a tongue, my spirit prays but my mind is unfruitful.
14. For if I pray in another tongue. “What is it,” says Witsius, (in his “Sacred Dissertations,”) “to pray with the tongue? with the spirit? with the mind? (1 Corinthians 14:14, 15.) The tongue means here a language unknown to others, and employed by one who is endowed with a supernatural gift of the Holy Spirit.
In this paragraph he goes on to show how vain a thing the ostentation of speaking unknown and unintelligible language must be. It was altogether unedifying and unprofitable (Co1 14:6): If I come to you speaking with tongues, what will it profit you, unless I speak to you by revelation, or by knowledge, or by prophesying, or by doctrine?
Commenting on 1 Corinthians 14:6-14
For if I pray in an unknown tongue,.... In the Hebrew tongue, which the greatest part of the Jewish doctors insisted (a) upon should be only used in prayer; which notion might be borrowed from them, and now greatly prevailed in the church at Corinth; and the custom was used by such as had the gift of speaking that language, even though the body and...