pany, and lie under the same roof, and make themselves companions of equal prosperities, and humor their friend; but if you call this friendship, you give a sacred name to humor or fancy; for there is a Platonic friendship, as well as a Platonic love; but they being the images of more noble bodies, are but like tinsel dressings, which will show bravely by candle light, and do excellently in a mask, but are not fit for conversation and the material intercourses of our life. These are the prettinesses of prosperity and good-natured wit; but when we speak of friend. ship, which is the best thing in the world (for it is love and beneficence, it is charity that is fitted for society), we cannot suppose a brave pile should be built up with nothing; and they that build castles in the air, and look upon friendship as upon a fine romance, a thing that pleases the fancy, but is good for nothing else, will do well when they are asleep, or when they are come to Elysium; and for aught I know in the meantime may be as much in love with Mandana in the Grand Cyrus, as with the Infanta of Spain, or any of the most perfect beauties and real excellences of the world and by dreaming of perfect and abstracted friendships, make them so immaterial that they perish in the handling and become good for nothing. But I know not whither I was going; I did only mean to say that because friendship is that by which the world is most blessed and receives most good, it ought to be chosen amongst the worthiest persons, that is, amongst those that can do greatest benefit to each other. And though in equal worthiness I may choose by my eye, or ear, that is, into the consideration of the essential, I may take in also the accidental and extrinsic worthinesses; yet I ought to give every one their just value: when the internal beauties are equal, these shall help to weigh down the scale, and I will love a worthy friend that can delight me as well as profit me, rather than him who cannot delight me at all, and profit me no more but yet I will not weigh the gayest flowers, or the wings of butterflies, against wheat; but when I am to choose wheat, I may take that which looks the brightest. I had rather see thyme and roses, marjorum and July flowers that are fair and sweet and medicinal, than the prettiest tulips that are good for nothing and my sheep and kine are better servants than racehorses and greyhounds. And I shall rather furnish my study with Plutarch and Cicero, with Livy and Polybius, than with Cassandra and Ibrahim Bassa; and if I do give an hour to these for divertisement or pleasure, yet I will dwell with them that can instruct me, and make me wise and eloquent, severe and useful to myself and others. I end this with the saying of Lælius in Cicero: "Amicitia non debet consequi utilitatem, sed amicitiam utilitas." When I choose my friend, I will not stay till I have received a kindness: but I will choose such a one that can do me many if I heed them: but I mean such kindnesses which make me wiser, and which make me better: that is, I will, when I choose my friend, choose him that is the bravest, the worthiest, and the most excellent person; and then your first question is soon answered. To love such a person, and to contract such friendships, is just so authorized by the principles of Christianity, as it is warranted to love wisdom and virtue, goodness and beneficence, and all the impresses of God upon the spirits of brave men. He that does a base thing in zeal for his friend, burns the golden thread that ties their hearts together. If friendship be a charity in society, and is not for contemplation and noise, but for material comforts and noble treatments and usages, this is no peradventure, but that if I buy land I may eat the fruits, and if I take a house I may dwell in it; and if I love a worthy person, I may please myself in his society and in this there is no exception, unless the friendship be between persons of a different sex; for then not only the interests of their religion and the care of their honor, but the worthiness of their friendship requires that their intercourse be prudent, and free from suspicion and reproach. And if a friend is obliged to bear a calamity, so he secure the honor of his friend, it will concern him to conduct his intercourse in the lines of a virtuous prudence, so that he shall rather lose much of his own comfort than she anything of her honor; and in this case the noises of people are so to be regarded that, next to innocence, they are the principal. But when by caution and prudence, and severe conduct, a friend hath done all that he or she can to secure fame and honorable reports, after this their noises are to be despised: they must not fright us from our friendships, nor from her fairest intercourses.* ON FEAR. FEAR is the duty we owe to God, as being the God of power and justice, the great judge of heaven and earth, the avenger of the cause of widows, the patron of the poor, and the advocate of the * Polemical Discourses. I venture to subjoin a few remarks upon, 1st, the advantages of friendship,-2dly, the duties. As to the advantages, see Bacon's admirable Essay on Friendship, where they are stated to be,-Peace in the affections,-Counsel in judgment,— and Assistance when necessary; the heart; the head; the hand. Upon peace in the affections, or the disburthening of grief and the communication of joy, see the 2nd vol. of South's Sermons, sermon 2, on John, chap. xv., ver. 15, in page 71, he says-" The third privilege of friendship is a sympathy in joy and grief. When a man shall have diffused his life, his self, and his whole concernments so far, that he can weep his sorrows with another's eyes! when he has another heart besides his own, both to share and to support his griefs, and when, if his joys overflow, he can treasure up the overplus and redundancy of them in another breast; so that he can (as it were) shake off the solitude of a single nature, by dwelling in two bodies at once, and living by another's breath; this surely is the height, the very spirit and perfection of all human felicities. It is a true and happy observation of that great philosopher the Lord Verulam, that this is the benefit of communication of our minds to others, that sorrows by being communicated grow less, and joys greater. And indeed, sorrow, like a stream, loses itself in many channels; and joy, like a ray of the sun, reflects witha greater ardor, and quickness, when it rebounds upon a man from the breast of his friend." Upon counsel in judgment, see also the same sermon, in which he says; "The fifth advantage of friendship is counsel and advice. A man will sometimes need not only another heart, but also another head beside his own. In solitude there is not only discomfort, but weakness also. And that saying of the wise man, Eccles. iv., 10, Wo to him that is alone, is verified upon none so much, as upon the friendless person: when a man shall be perplexed with knots and problems of business and contrary affairs; where the determination is dubious, and both parts of the contrariety seem equally weighty, so that which way soever the choice determines, a man is sure to venture a great concern. How happy then is it to fetch in aid from another person, whose judgment may be greater than my own, and whose concernment is sure not to be less! There oppressed, a mighty God and terrible. Fear is the great bridle of intemperance, the modesty of the spirit, and the restraint of gaieties and dissolutions; it is the girdle to the soul, and the are some passages of a man's affairs that would quite break a single understanding. So many intricacies, so many labyrinths are there in them, that the succors of reason fail, the very force and spirit of it being lost in an actual intention scattered upon several clashing objects at once; in which case the interposal of a friend is like the supply of a fresh party to a besieged yielding city." In the conclusion of Bacon's Essay, he says: "After these two noble fruits of friendship (peace in the affections, and support of the judgment), followeth the last fruit, which is like the pomegranate, full of many kernels; I mean, aid and bearing a part in all actions and occasions. How many things are there which a man cannot with any face, or comeliness, say or do himself? A man can scarce allege his own merits with modesty," &c. As to the duties of friendship, some of them are Secresy, which is the chastity of friendship ;- Protection of children after his death. "As to patience :”- "Do not think thou didst contract alliance with an angel, when thou didst take thy friend into thy bosom; he may be weak as well as thou art, and thou mayst need pardon as well as he." Suspension of judgment: see South's sermon, where he says: "It is an imitation of the charities of heaven, which when the creature lies prostrate in the weakness of sleep, and weariness, spreads the covering night, and darkness over it, to conceal it in that condition; but as soon as our spirits are refreshed, and nature returns to its morning vigor, God then bids the sun rise, and the day shine upon us, both to advance and to show that activity. It is the ennobling office of the understanding, to correct the fallacious and mistaking reports of sense, and to assure us that the staff in the water is straight, though our eye would tell us it is crooked. So it is the excellency of friendship to rectify, or at least to qualify the malignity of those surmises, that would misrepresent a friend, and traduce him in our thoughts. Am I told that my friend has done me an injury, or that he has committed any undecent action? why the first debt that I both owe to his friendship, and that he may challenge from mine, is rather to question the truth of the report, than presently to believe my friend unworthy. A friend will be sure to act the part of an advocate, before he will assume that of a judge." "The last and most sacred duty of friendship is after we have stood upon the planks round his grave. When my friend is dead, I will not turn into. his grave and be stifled with his earth: but I will mourn for him, and perform his will, and take care of his relatives, and do for him as if he were alive; and thus it is that friendships never die." handmaid to repentance, the arrest of sin; it preserves our apprehensions of the Divine Majesty and hinders our single actions from combining to sinful habits; it is the mother of consideration, and the nurse of sober counsels. Fear is the guard of a man in the days of prosperity, and it stands upon the watch-towers and spies the approaching danger, and gives warning to them that laugh loud, and feast in the chambers of rejoicing, where a man cannot consider by reason of the noises of wine, and jest, and music; and if Prudence takes it by the hand and leads it on to duty, it is a state of grace, and a universal instrument to infant-religion, and the only security of the less perfect persons; and in all senses is that homage we owe to God, who sends often to demand it, even then when he speaks in thunder, or smites by a plague, or awakens us by threatenings, or discomposes our easiness by sad thoughts, and tender eyes and fearful hearts, and trembling considerations. Let the grounds of our actions be noble, beginning upon reason, proceeding with prudence, measured by the common lines of men, and confident upon the expectation of a usual Providence. Let us proceed from causes to effects, from natural means to ordinary events, and believe felicity not to be a chance but a choice; and evil to be the daughter of sin and the divine anger, not of fortune and fancy. Let us fear God when we have made him angry and not be afraid of him when we heartily and laboriously do our duty; and then fear shall be a duty, and a rare instrument of many in all other cases, it is superstition or folly, it is sin or punishment, the ivy of religion, and the misery of an honest and a weak heart; and it is to be cured only by reason and good company, a wise guide and a plain rule, a cheerful spirit and a contented mind, by joy in God according to the commandments, that is, a rejoicing evermore. The illusions of a weak piety or an unskilful confident soul, fancy to see mountains of difficulty, but touch them and they seem like clouds riding upon the wings of the wind, and put on shapes as we please to dream. He that denies to give alms for the fear of being poor, or to entertain a disciple for fear of being suspected of the party: he that takes part of the intemperance because he dares not displease the company, or in any sense fears |