thing more than uncharitableness and malice, yet these are commonly by false-hearted hypocrites, called by some pious, virtuous names, and God himself is entitled to them: so that few worldlings, ambitious persons or time-servers, but will confidently pretend religion for all their falsehood to their friends, or bloody cruelty to the servants of Christ, that comply not with their carnal interest.

12. Perhaps some of your friends may really mistake your case, and think that you suffer as evil doers, and instead of comforting you, may be your sharpest censurers. This is one of the most notable things set out to our observation in the book of Job: it was not the smallest part of his affliction, that when the hand of God was heavy upon him, and then if ever was the time for his friends to have been his comforters, and friends indeed, on the contrary they became his scourge, and by unjust accusations, and misinterpretations of the providence of God, did greatly add to his affliction! When God had taken away his children, wealth and health, his friends would take away the reputation and comfort of his integrity; and under pretence of bringing him to repentance, did charge him with that which he was never guilty of: they wounded his good name, and would have wounded his conscience, and deprived him of his inward peace: censorious, false accusing friends, do cut deeper than malicious, slandering enemies. It is no wonder, if strangers or enemies do misjudge and misreport our actions: but when your bosom friends, that should most intimately know you, and be the chief witnesses of your innocency against all others, shall in their jealousy, or envy, or peevishness, or falling out, be your chief reproaches and unjust accusers, as it makes it seem more credible to others, so it will come nearer to yourselves. And yet this is a thing that must be expected; yea, even your most self-denying acts of obedience to God, may be so misunderstood by godly men, and real friends, as by them to be taken for your great miscarriage, and turned to your rebuke: as David's dancing before the ark was by his wife; which yet did but make him resolve to be yet more vile. If you be cast into poverty, or disgrace, or prison, or banishment, for your necessary obedience to Christ, perhaps your friend or wife may become your accuser for this your greatest service, and say, This is This is your own doing: your rashness, or indis

cretion, or self-conceitedness, or wilfulness hath brought it upon you. What need had you to say such words, or to do this or that? Why could not you have yielded in so small a matter? Perhaps your most costly and excellent obedience shall, by your nearest friends, be called the fruits of pride, or humour, or passion, or some corrupt affection, or at least of folly or inconsiderateness. When flesh and blood hath long been striving in you against your duty, and saying, Do not cast away thyself: O serve not God at so dear a rate! God doth not require thee to undo thyself; why shouldest thou not avoid so great inconveniences? When with much ado you have conquered all your carnal reasonings, and denied yourselves and your carnal interests, you must expect, even from some religious friends, to be accused for these very actions, and perhaps their accusations may fasten such a blot upon your names, as shall never be washed out till the day of judgment. By difference of interests, or apprehensions, and by unacquaintedness with your hearts, and actions, the righteousness of the righteous may be thus taken from him, and friends may do the work of enemies, yea, of Satan himself, the accuser of the brethren; and may prove as thorns in your bed, and gravel in your shoes, yea, in your eyes, and wrong you much more than open adversaries could have done. How it is like to go with that man's reputation, you may easily judge, whose friends are like Job's, and his enemies like David's, that lay snares before him, and diligently watch for matter of reproach; yet this may-befall the best of men.

13. You may be permitted by God to fall into some real crime, and then your friends may possibly think it is their duty to disown you, so far as you have wronged God: when you provoke God to frown upon you, he may cause your friends to frown upon you: if you will fall out with him, and grow strange to him, no marvel if your truest friends fall out with you, and grow strange to you. They love you for your godliness, and for the sake of Christ; and therefore must abate their love, if you abate your godliness; and must, for the sake of Christ, be displeased with you for your sins. And if in such a case of real guilt, you should be displeased at their displeasure, and should expect that your friend should befriend your sin, or carry himself towards you in your guilt, as if you were innocent, you will but show

that you understand not the nature of true friendship, nor the use of a true friend; and are yet yourselves too friendly to your sins.

14. Moreover, those few friends that are truest to you, may be utterly unable to relieve you in your distress, or to give you ease, or to do you any good. The case may be such that they can but pity you, and lament your sorrows, and weep over you: you may see in them that man is not as God, whose friendship can accomplish all the good that he desireth to his friends. The wisest, and greatest, and best of men, are silly comforters, and uneffectual helps. You may be sick, and pained, and grieved, and distressed, notwithstanding any thing that they can do for you; nay, perhaps in their ignorance, they may increase your misery, while they desire your relief; and by striving indirectly to help and ease you, may tie the knot faster and make you worse. They may provoke those more against you that oppress you, while they think they speak that which should tend to set you free: they may think to ease your troubled minds by such words as shall increase the troubled; or to deliver you as Peter would have delivered Christ, and saved his Saviour, first by carnal counsel; "Be it far from thee, Lord; this shall not be unto thee:" (Matt. xvi. 22 :) And then by carnal unjust force, (by drawing his sword against the officers). Love and good meaning will not prevent the mischiefs of ignorance and mistake. If your friend cut your throat, while he thought to cut but a vein to cure your disease, it is not his friendly meaning that will save your lives. Many a thousand sick people are killed by their friends, that attend them, with an earnest desire of their life; while they ignorantly give them that which is contrary to their disease, and will not be the less pernicious for the good meaning of the giver. Who have more tender affections than mothers to their children? And yet a great part of the calamity of the world of sickness, and the misery of man's life, proceedeth from the ignorant and erroneous indulgence of mothers to their children, who to please them, let them eat and drink what they will, and use them to excess and gluttony in their childhood, till nature be abused and mastered, and clogged with those superfluities and crudities, which are the dunghill matter of most of the following diseases of their lives.

I might here also remember you how your friends may themselves be overcome with a temptation, and then become the more dangerous tempters of you, by how much the greater their interest is in your affections. If they be infected with error, they are the likest persons to ensnare you if they be tainted with covetousness or pride, there is none so likely to draw you to the same sin and so your friends may be in effect your most deadly enemies, deceivers and destroyers.

15. And if you have friends that are never so firm and constant, they may prove (not only unable to relieve you, but) very additions to your grief. If they are afflicted in the participation of your sufferings, as your troubles are become theirs (without your ease), so their trouble for you will become yours, and so the stock of your sorrow will be increased. And they are mortals, and liable to distress as well as you. And therefore they are like to bear their share in several sorts of sufferings: and so friendship will make their sufferings to be yours their sicknesses and pains, their fears and griefs, their wants and dangers, will all be yours. And the more they are your hearty friends, the more they will be yours. And so you will have as many additions to the proper burden of your griefs, as you have suffering friends: when you do but hear that they are dead, you say as Thomas, "Let us also go that we may die with him." (John xi. 16.) And having many such friends you will almost always have one or other of them in distress; and so be seldom free from sorrow; besides all that which is properly your own.

16. Lastly, If you have a friend that is both true and useful, yet you may be sure he must stay with you but a little while. "The godly men will cease, and the faithful fail from among the children of men; while men of lying, flattering lips, and double hearts survive, and the wicked walk on every side, while the vilest men are exalted." (Psal. xii. 1, 2. 8.) While swarms of false, malicious men are left round about you, perhaps God will take away your dearest friends. If among a multitude of unfaithful ones, you have but one that is your friend indeed, perhaps God will take away that one. He may be separated from you into another country; or taken away to God by death. Not that God doth grudge you the mercy of a faithful friend; but

that he would be your All, and would not have you hurt yourselves with too much affection to any creature, and for other reasons to be named anon.

And to be forsaken of your friends is not all your affliction: but to be forsaken is a great aggravation of it. 1. For they used to forsake us in our greatest sufferings and straits, when we have the greatest need of them.

2. They fail us most at a dying hour, when all other worldly comfort faileth: as we must leave our houses, lands and wealth, so must we for the present leave our friends and as all the rest are silly comforters, when we have once received our citation to appear before the Lord, so also are our friends but silly comforters: they can weep over us, but they cannot, with all their care, delay the separating stroke of death, one day or hour.

Only by their prayers, and holy advice, remembering us of everlasting things, and provoking us in the work of preparation, they may prove to us friends indeed. And therefore we must value a holy, heavenly, faithful friend, as one of the greatest treasures upon earth. And while we take notice how, as men, they may forsake us, we must not deny but that, as saints, they are precious, and of singular use to us; and Christ useth by them to communicate his mercies; and if any creatures in the world may be blessings to us, it is holy persons, that have most of God in their hearts and lives.

3. And it is an aggravation of the cross, that they often fail us, when we are most faithful in our duty, and stumble most upon the most excellent acts of our obedience.

4. And those are the persons that oftentimes fail us, of whom we have deserved best, and from whom we might have expected most.

Review the experiences of the choicest servants that Christ hath had in the world, and you shall find enough to confirm you of the vanity of man, and the instability of the dearest friends. How highly was Athanasius esteemed; and yet at last deserted and banished by the famous Constantine himself! How excellent a man was Gregory Nazianzen, and highly valued in the church; and yet by reproach and discouragements driven away from his church at Constantinople whither he was chosen, and envied by the bishops round about him. How worthy a man was the eloquent