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friendship, you give a sacred name to humour 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 shew 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 goodnatured wit; but when we speak of friendship, 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 mean time 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 excellencies 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 essen

tial, 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 need 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 authorised 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 interest of their religion and the care of their honour, 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 seeure the honour 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 honour; 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 honourable 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 oppressed, a mighty God and terrible. Fear is the great bridle of intemperance, the modesty 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

spirit, and the restraint of gaieties and dissolutions; it is the girdle to the soul, and the 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,

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 with a greater ardour, 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 besides his own. In solitude there is not only discomfort, but weakness also. And that saying of the wise man, Eccles. iv. 10. Woe 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 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 succours of reason fail, the very force and spirit of it being lost in an

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