Friendship

It is the belief that I shall love my friends in heaven that principally kindles my love to them on earth. If I thought I should never know them after death, and consequently never love them more, when this life is ended, I should in reason number them with temporal things, and love them comparatively but a little, even as I love other transitory things (allowing for the excellency in the nature of grace). But now I converse with some delight with my godly friends, as believing I shall converse with them forever, and take comfort in the very dead and absent, as believing we shall shortly meet in heaven: and I love them, I hope, with a love that is of a heavenly nature.

You would count him unworthy of the name of a friend who, knowing a thief or an incendiary to lurk in your family, with a design to kill, or rob, or burn your house, would conceal it from you and not acquaint you with it on his own accord. There is no such thief, murderer, incendiary, as sin.… Silence or concealment in this case is treachery. He is the most faithful friend, and worthy of most esteem and affection, that deals most plainly with us, in reference to the discovery of our sin. He that is reserved in this case is but a false friend, a mere pretender to love.

Innumerous are the examples, both ancient and modern, which prove that the society of the good tends to the safety of the soul, and that of the wicked to its perdition; that good instruction is profitable, and evil conversation dangerous; and that silence and solitude increase our spiritual advancement, while the dissipation and tumult of the world retard its growth. Live then alone, and labor in the service of God; or join yourself to the devout and holy, with whom you may discourse on the virtues of Jesus Christ.