his particular use be not you of this Humour and Character IX A Man out of good Husbandry oftentimes denies himself many things that he freely gives to another this is to pay dear for the respect that others give him this seems as if the Riches that is given us was not given us for own selves but for those that have business with us X. Be not Covetous nor prodigal in your Expences govern them according to your Condition and your Estate it would be imprudence and Vanity to spend higher than you are able and want of the heart to live not to make an Expence agreeable to your Birth and station that it hath pleased God to place you in observe a just middle between these two extreams and by that means you will merit the esteem of all and be taken for what you are XI When you make an Expence regular and agreeable to your Condition Men will have reason to say you are Wise and know how to live well but when you make it too great and that it be taken notice of you cannot help it if Men of good Sense Censure and Condemn you XII If you spend higher than you ought you will give Weapons to your Enemies to fight with you that is you will give them Reason to deny that you have right to make such Expences nay they will go further and will enquire into your Family and Ancestors and will without Favour Examin if you be of that Quality and Descent that can intitle you to make such an Expence XIII Do justice to others as well as to your self do not exalt your self by your Expence above what you are and endeavour to make your advancement due to your Merit and Virtue XIV If you find your self to abound in Riches make a Law to your self to do nothing to make a Show and a Noise and your moderation in this case will be more for your Reputation than your extravagant spending would be by this means you will gain Friends and by the other make Enemies envious and jealous CHAP. XXIV Advice upon the thoughts of Death I. MY Dear Children you will pass your life without Trouble if you be not afraid to lose it Death treading on our Heels continually and being almost always by our side we need not wonder if they whose Consciences accuse them do fear it and if they have not one moment of quiet all other Objects pass away but this stays with them and never quits them II. Do not seek for a Reason why so many die without making their Wills nor why they do not make them but at the last extremity It is because they cannot make it without speaking of Death which they fly and fear above all things III. There is no Person amongst us to whom the Life of Jared and Methusalem is not always present every one flatters himself with the length of the Course they are to run and considers himself always as if he had but just begun it and never as if he was going to end it IV. Experience may well teach us that more then half of the World dies before Threescore and yet all run Counter to this Experience and look upon it as in Relation to others and place themselves in the number of those that must have a pleasant and a happy Old Age. V. One dies in his Bed as in the Field of Battel of a Fever as with the Shot of a Musket and no Man is sure that he shall live longer than another VI. To the end that Death may not take from the Goods that you possess and all the Pleasures you enjoy deprive your self by little and little of both the one and the other and Death will have little more to do when it can do no harm it will not come so soon for the most part nor when it cannot affright when it comes VII Death does not look hideous and terrible but when it is look'd upon as a Monster an Enemy to Nature if you will often approach to it in your Thoughts and make it familiar to you you will afterward look upon it as a Friend that comes to assist you and to carry you from the miserable Condition you are in VIII Death is the Mistress of our Days but not of our Minds and Hearts she can deprive us of Life but not against our Will if we expect it without Fear or Trouble IX Wherefore should you fear Death since you cannot grieve for Life after you have lost it because you are threatned with a Hundred sorts of Deaths must you fear them all is it not better quietly to expect one X. If by fearing Death you could be assur'd to avoid it this Fear would be reasonable even in the greatest Men but being it cannot produce this effect it serves foâ— nothing but to make you die a thousand times though you can but die once XI No Man is grieved that he did not live a hundred Years since and why should any one grieve that he should not live in Five Hundred Years to come you have no more right to the future than you have to the past you are betwixt them both hold your self in Peace and be content XII You will go out of the World as you came into it not knowing the Day make good use of this ignorance this moment so terrible to some is hid from you perhaps for no other reason but that you should think every Day the last of your Life XIII What matters it if you die Ten or Twelve Years before it was expected amongst an innunumerable number of Men can one know that there are two or three fewer or that Paris is not so well peopl'd or the State not so well served XIV Life and Death are equally natural you began to live without Desire or Passion and you ought to die so The World is a Theater on which every one plays his part it is for the beauty of the Universe and his own Advantage that every one acts his own in his time XV. You ought to know how to die whilst others learn to live there is only God that is Eternal your continual changes from nothing to life from health to sickness and from Life to Death ought to give you a high Idea of the grandeur of the infinitely perfect Being XVI It would surprize you if one of your Servants should refuse to obey your Order in any thing but what pleases him it is equally wonderful that God that has created us to live and to die and that we should obey him in the one and refuse it in the other XVII It is to cease to be a Man to make himself an Enemy to Death Since you are born to die you are subject to Death as well as to Life and I can assure you are alive and dead at the same time You are alive because you are not yet dead you are dead because you were not alive in Ages past and you shall nor be alive in those to
come XVIII If you make ill use of your Life it is unprofitable to you and when you lose it you lose nothing wherefore are you then afraid to lose it have not you more reason to hope it than to fear it XIX You have been Heir to your Ancestors is it not reasonable that your Children should be your Successors your Life is limited to Fifteen or Twenty Lustres why should you desire to go beyond it Have your Ancestors done you the wrong to take your places wherefore would you fill the Places of your Descendants XX. It is strange to fear an imperceptible moment to the last breath we live and so soon as we are expired it cannot be truly said that we die since we are no more We do not find this Death in one that is yet alive nor do we more find it in him who is nor more because he is past Death and it has no more power of him XXI A Dwarf is a Man as much as a Giant and he that lives but a short time is as much a Man as Adam and Seth who lived many Ages the great and the little in the Life of Man is but as one point in regard of Eternity and the World seems no more empty by his Death than the Sea appears dry by a drop of Water taken from it XXII It would be terrible and frightful to us if Man could not die since he would find his Life a Fountain of inexhaustible Miseries XXIII Thales the wise Graecian assures us that it is the same thing to live and to die and one day being asked why he did not die he answer'd because if I should die it would be asked why I did not live XXIV I am not of that Philosophers Opinion I do acknowledge that Life is a Good that God has given us to enjoy and that Death is a punishment of sin therefore I do not look upon them as things indifferent yet the difference that we find between them ought not to give us too great a tie to the one nor too great a fear for the other We are all Criminals but we ought not go cowardly to our Punishment we ought to be sorry that we have given cause for our Condemnation but we ought to suffer with Submission Courage and Constancy XXV The first of our Days teaches us to live but the last does not teach us to die learn this Lesson long before you make use of it and the sooner you do it the better XXVI In all Contracts of Marriage there are Articles that concern the Death of both Husband and Wife and as soon as we make a strict alliance with Reason we ought to make Articles of Death between her and our selves this will make our Alliance more firm more Spiritual and more Christian CHAP. XXV Vpon the same Subject I. MY Dear Children you ought to regard this Life as a passage to another which never will have an end this being so you ought not to set your Affections upon any thing here below seem it never so great and Charming You ought early to begin to die to Honour to Pleasure and to your self II. You ought to consider that your Salvation is the greatest business you have to do and you cannot think too much of it nor too soon III. If you have nothing to reproach your self with you will be quiet and easie in your sickness One is not afraid of Death but when he has lived ill IV. Let it not trouble you when you think of Death but to the contrary look upon it with Pleasure as an end of all your Miseries and as the beginning of a happy Life V. When you see so many Persons of Quality think no more of Death than if they were never to die that ought to engage you to enter into your self and to reason justly upon this Practice their insensibility ought to touch you and you ought to be perswaded that the less they think of Death the more they ought to think of it and the less they fear it the more they have reason to fear it VI. Make use of the Blindness and Folly of others Pleasures pass away Greatness vanishes and believe it it is late if not too late to renounce the amusements of the World when you can no more enjoy them VII Make Reflexion upon the difference that there is betwixt a Worldly Man that is with all the Pomp of this World I mean one that has loved them to the end of his Life and a good and pious Man who has always labour'd to bury himself living in an humble obscure and retir'd life the one dies overwhelm'd under the weight of his Honours Pleasures and Greatness the other dies under the Weight of his Mortifications his Fasting and Humiliations They both die but what difference in their Death in the Thoughts and Consequence of one and the other the World hath fought against them both but they have ended the Battel in a different manner the one is Conquer'd and hath submitted to the Laws of the Conqueror and the other hath triumphed over him so that it might be said that the Death of one is glorious and may be envyed by those who look upon it with the Eyes of Faith and the Death of the other ought to make those that live such a Life to tremble VIII But without considering so morally why should not you think often of Death being that Experience teaches that you must die every step you make leads towards your Grave is it possible that you can do this without Reflexion and that you can travel so long in the Way and not sometimes think of the end that this way leads you to IX You live but to die and always to think of Life and of all that may make it pass away pleasantly and never think of the time that must put an end to it is a thing very extraordinary for a Man of Sense X. Our Sicknesses our Wrinkles our Gray Hairs our Years past that cannot come again and how little we can rely upon those that are to come are all of them eloquent Tongues that teach us that we must die XI The different States of your Life are a looking-glass continually before your Eyes shewing your approaching Death which already has laid his Hands upon you You have been Infants young and Men grown up all that is in order of Nature but when you are Old what can you think or hope to become Death without doubt will follow Old Age which will be the end of your Life as Old Age has been the end of your precedent Ages XII You will ask me what are the means to think of Death when one loves life so much To that I answer there is one way which is easie that is not to love Life so much XIII Why would not you think of Death since it will end your Necessities your Weaknesses and your Miseries it will finish a Voyage at the end of which you will find a happy
ADVICE TO YOUNG GENTLEMEN In their Several Conditions of Life By way of ADDRESS From a Father to his Children By the Abbot GOVSSAVLT Counsellor in Parliament With his Sentiments and Maxims upon what passes in Civil Society Printed at PARIS 1697 and Translated into English LONDON Printed for Tho. Leigh at the Peacock against St. Dunstans Church in Fleet-street 1698. THE PREFACE THE Advice that is given here is of two sorts one is general and regards all sorts of Persons of whatsoever Profession they are without medling with their particular Employments and Actions the other is particular and considers what ordinarily occurs in the Affairs of the World It is cettain both the one and the other will not be unprofitable and the Methods of insinuating it into the Minds of the Reader will not be disagreeable It is a Father that gives Advice to his Children to make them worthy of the Name and Family from which they come and it is for that Reason that all the Counsels design to inspire them with Sentiments of Honour and Probity It is a Father that throughly understands the World and desires that his Children should be truly Upright and Religious and not remarkable for an affected and seeming Devotion and who desires at the same time that their Religion should not hinder them from having all the Qualities requisite to make them esteemed and beloved of all they converse with It is a Father that joining the Light of Religion with that which a long and consummated Experience in the Affairs of the World hath given him makes use both of the one and the other to make his Children to be distinguished by their Christian and their Moral Virtues All that he speaks to them is to subdue the Irregularities of their Minds and Manners and to teach them to lead their Lives contentedly in all the Troubles that their Employments and Business may give them His manner of speaking concisely and in few Words he thinks to be the best means to make an Impression upon their Minds and the Truth is laid naked and embraced for its own sake in effect it is made more familiar being coucht in few Words and makes a more lively and natural impression upon the Mind I know that the Book which Monsieur Hoquette hath writ upon the same Subject has been receiv'd with a general Applause and that all Men of Wit Learning and Probity have had it in great esteem heretofore I have read it with Pleasure and found it so well and considerately writ that I must affirm that I have seen nothing of that kind for its solidity and composure comparable to it I have yet an admirable and advantagious Idea of it in my Mind But it is so long since that Book has been writ that it is now scarce to be found and I thought that a little Novelty would not be displeasing I add that there cannot be too much written upon this Subject because it is so generally profitable and if I have had the same end that Monsieur Hoquett had I have certainly made use of different means to come to that end I have but an imperfect though a noble Idea of his Book so that I cannot make any advantage of what he has writ and much less can I make use of what he has thought Monsieur le Count de Bussy Raboutin to name him is sufficient to praise him he is so well known by his Merit that all the Learned without contest place him in the number of those that have made themselves the most admired and distinguished by their Writings Monsieur Raboutin I say has writ a Discourse to his Children which has been receiv'd it is enough to say like his other Works But how Elegant and Excellent soever his Book may be I hope I may be permitted to say that he hath not said all that may be said of the Subject but something new of my own Thoughts may be added Moreover the Method I have used in treating of this matter is so different from his that I could not chuse but publish my Thoughts upon this Subject My little Work was scarce begun but his appear'd in the World but that did not make me change my Design but I follow'd my own way and at length have arriv'd at the end I intended THE CONTENTS Chap. I. General Counsel upon all the Occurrences of Life Page 1 Chap. ii iii. Vpon the same Subject 6. 11 Chap. iv Advice concerning what kind of Life ought to be chosen and after what manner a Man should live in his Profession 15 Chap. v. Advice how one ought to live in the World 19 Chap. vi Advice upon what concerns Religion 23 Chap. vii Counsel in respect of the Company you are to keep 27 Chap. viii Vpon the same Subject 33 Chap. ix Advice concerning Reports 37 Chap. x. Counsels upon Conscience 42 Chap. xi Vpon the same Subject 48 Chap. xii Advice upon all that has the Air of Courage Choler and promptness to 1 quarrel 52 Chap. xiii Advice concerning the Judgment you ought to make of the Words and Actions of others 57 Chap. xiv Advice concerning what Thoughts we should have of Greatness and Riches of our Losses and the Misfortunes of our Lives 61 Chap. xv xvi Advice upon true and false Devotion 68 Chap. xvii Advice against Covetousness and all that relates to it 80 Chap. xviii Advice upon Vanity and true Glory 85 Chap. xix Advice upon Raillery 93 Chap. xx Of Charity and Alms which ought to be performed to the Poor 98 Chap. xxi Advice upon Sincerity in Words and the Way to know when we should speak and when we should be silent 103 Chap. xxii Vpon Evil Speaking or Slandering 110 Chap. xxiii Advice about Expences and the good management of them 115 Chap. xxiv xxv xxvi Advice upon the thoughts of Death 118 Chap. xxvii Advice upon Friends and the concerns of Friendship ADVICE TO Young Gentlemen In the several Conditions of Life By way of Address from a Father to his Children c. CHAP. I. General Counsel upon all the Occurrences of Life I. MY dear Children if you will be Happy and be esteemed in the World fear God be faithful to your Prince and live like Men of Honour and Integrity II. If any one comes a Mile to do you a Kindness go two to do him the like or greater in acknowledgment of it III. If you want a Fortune endeavour to merit one and force blind Fortune to open her Eyes by your constant and industrious Well-doing IV. Do not reprove publickyy those whom you think you have Right to correct lest you be thought to hate them rather than their Weakness and Faults V. You cannot be too circumspect in your Words for oftentimes one word spoke unawares or in raillery or even wittily costs him dear that thought to get Honour by it VI. Make as many Friends as you can for you will find but few true ones You will find your best Friends in
rallied or those present have not the Judgment to understand the manner but rather consider what was said than the manner of saying it X. There is nothing in my Opinion wherein you can do your self so much Wrong as to set up for a Professor of Raillery if once you give your self this Reputation you will lose the confidence of your Friends and the esteem of all Persons of Honour None will value those who make it all their Design and all their Aim to pass for a Wit and Railer and to divert himself at other Mens Costs Nothing appears serious nothing honest or allowable in such a Design XI If you rally with Wit you will make Enemies with your Wit but they will be nevertheless your Enemies and you will nevertheless make them think that your Wit is not capable of any thing better and make them believe that all the strength and quickness of your Wit has no further aim nor cannot go further than a trifling injurious pleasantry XII There are some who to give themselves the Liberty of rallying and that none should deny it them begin with themselves and first turn themselves into Ridicule This is to buy this liberty very dear I beseech you do not you purchase it at that Rate XIII A Man of my Acquaintance much given to Raillery both by Inclination and Custom begun to play his part as soon as he came into Company and said a Hundred pleasant things of his own Nose and other parts of his Face and after that he thought all things would be permitted him and no person escaped him but in truth there was more to be said against the Humour and Wit of the Man than against the 〈◊〉 Eyes or shape of his Face he 〈◊〉 himself obnoxious to all Men of Sense and Reason and that understood Conversation XIV If you give your self the Air and Humour of a Rallier in all Companies Men will not believe you capable of any Secret or any Business they will fear and not without Reason that you will turn all that is serious and of consequence into jest and pleasantry they will never ask your Advice upon Marriage or any Employment that may present it self they will perswade themselves that nothing solid or serious will agree with your Wit XV. In a well establish'd Government Raillery ought to be banished it is a Pest that infects and corrupts thousands that might do the State and Publick good Service This Pest is so much the more dangerous and spreads it self more easily because it always appears pleasant and agreeable XVI If these Railers were not applauded the Race of these Idle and ill-contriv'd Wits would soon be exterminated and Conversation would become more easie and more honest XVII By accustoming your self to rally you will lose the esteem you ought to have for them with whom you live and you will fancy a false Idea of your own Merit and Perfections the oue is against Civility and Charity the other against Justice and Truth XVIII The more you are above others by your Birth Riches or Employment the more wary you should be how you displease or anger them the Rank you are plac'd in above others does not give you right to despise really or affront them they dare not offend you because they fear you do not offend them that they may love you XIX There are many that applaud themselves when they have exercised a fine piece of Raillery and Wit but for certain you will be better pleased with your self than they are when you abstain from it and have sacrificed some Words to the Reputation of others which will be more to your own Honour and the satisfaction of your Conscience CHAP. XX. Of Charity and Alms which ought to be perform'd to the Poor I. MY Dear Children Alms is a good Work that cannot be deny'd but you must do this good work rightly if you will make it acceptable to God and profitable to your self II. You ought not to trust to your Alms you do as if they should license you to continue in your disorderly living You ought not to purchase if I may so speak this impunity by a liberality which does not cost you much and which your own Interest induc'd you to your Alms ought to be the proof and the effect of the Conversion of your Heart and to supply the want of Zeal and fervour in the mortification of your selves they ought to be as the Golden Key that open's the Gate of Heaven III. The sacred Scripture teaches us that he is Happy that has Pity on the Poor it is therefore easie to make your selves Happy for ever since it is natural to succour those that are in Misery And why shall you he Happy Because you shall have good Advocates and powerful Intercessors in Heaven the Alms that you give to the Needy shall speak continually for you IV. The Sacred Scripture teaches us farther that none can believe in God and make profession of being a Christian without loving of Mercy it appears by this Expression that you ought not only to give Alms bountifully but that you should take pleasure in doing it and seek for occasions to do it V. A Father of the Church assures us that we cannot be pleas'd with giving Alms except we be verily perswaded that the good we do to others we do to our selves and that we give to our selves what we give to others in their Necessity and that we put a little Earth in the Hands of the Poor by which we gain Heaven VI. If you have Faith you will do your self Honour and Pleasure in succouring the Word incarnate in the Persons of the Poor who are his Members VII What joy and glory ought it to be to give to him who has given to us all that we have and who has made us all that we are VIII When you refuse the Poor that ask of you you do great wrong to your selves for the Scripture positively says that to do Charity to the Poor and Sick is to lend to the Lord upon great Interest who will certainly pay again what is lent him IX God forbids us to lend to Men upon Usury but he not only permits us but commands us to do it to him Usury in regard to Men is Criminal and punished with eternal Death and to the contrary our Usury in regard to God is innocent and profitable of which a happy life that never shall have an end is the infallible Reward X. God has no need of your Money it is he that gives us all we have but the Poor have need of it and when you give Alms to the Poor God receives them by their Hands the Poor cannot render what you give them and can make no other acknowledgment than to Pray for you which when they do they say at it were O Lord God we have received some Money we can never pay it again good God pay it for us if you please He is good Security you give Credit
Eternity XIV If God infinitely just has Condemned Man to Death as a punishment due to his Sin the same God infinitely good has given Death to the same Man as a Soveraign Remedy to all his Evils and an infallible means to make him for ever Happy XV. The nature of Man was created as a Vessel that ought to be fill'd with nothing but good and precious Liquors but the Devil jealous of his Happiness having put the Poison of Sin in this Vessel which corrupted it God was willing to repair that which the Devil had spoiled and not being willing the Poison should so possess our Nature that it should always remain infected he breaks this Vessel in pieces by Death that the Poison might run out and that re-uniting these divided pieces at the general Resurrection this Nature might be mended purified and become as wholly different from it self XVI When you shall have quit the Care you had for the Grandeur and Riches of this World and turned your Heart towards God you will easily surmount the rest and not look upon Life but with indifferency your Treasure will be in Heaven you will never lose the sight of it and you will easily resolve to be soon with it to enjoy it to all Eternity XVII You have no need of Faith or Rhetorick to perswade you that all must die the Decree of God which for so many Ages has been indifferently executed upon all Men is an evident demonstration of it and if you find any so extravagant as to doubt it you need but to lead them from Tomb to Tomb and the innumerable number of Bones that they may see there will convince them of the Truth of it XVIII Death has her Lessons and Responses and they are within us let us ask her as long as we please the greatest and most sensible of all her Lessons the most precise and infallible of all her Answers will be that we must die XIX Since that all that we have within us teaches us and speaks continually to us that we must die will it be strange to make this necessity of Death the Object of all your Thoughts and your Reflexions XX. Since that all that are about you cannot tell you the Day or Hour of your Death will it be strange if you make this uncertainty the Object of your Meditations and that by a Spiritual watchfulness make a serious consideration of that which one Day must certainly arrive and of what will become of you XXI That you must die is an undoubted Truth you ought therefore to make all your Endeavours and employ all your Cares to die well It is the most natural consequence that you can draw from this Truth but to employ all your cares without thinking of Death and what good will it do you to think of it except you think of it in such a manner as the Thoughts of it will be to your Profit and Advantage XXII Your Soul that will survive your Body does not that merit your care and pains that you should make it happy for ever does it not deserve more your care and labour than the mass of Flesh which it animates What have you not done for this Mass What cares have you not taken to preserve it in this point I leave you to your own considerations CHAP. XXVI Advice upon the thoughts of Death I. MY Dear Children the great and infallible means to die well is to live well and the great secret and means to live well is to think often of Death II. A good Death is nothing but the consequence of a good Life live well that you may die well and think often of dying that you may live well so that a good Life and a good Death reciprocally depend one upon another and they serve the one the other as the means to come to a good end they give a Hand one to the other to lead a Man where he ought to be III. All the most great and charming things in the World may be consider'd two ways in relation to their Beginning and their End the beginning of Greatness Honours and Riches is God but as soon as we consider them as coming from God what difference do we find betwixt them and God from whom they come when we consider this they must needs appear despicable These are like little Stars that with their small Lights dazle us but disappear and fall by their own weakness into the profound darkness of Night As soon as God the Sun of glory infinitely bright appears before our Eyes in full splendour such is the frailty and misery of all in this World be it never so great never so rich when we consider it in respect to its beginning God IV. Thy Misery and greatness appears yet greater in respect of its end since all Greatness and Riches end with our Lives and are buried with us in our Graves V. All the World runs headlong to Death great and small Rich and Poor Kings and Shepherds and the swift Revolutions of Age draws after them Millions of Men. Our Fathers are dead we shall likewise die our Posterity shall pass away like us and like them that have gone before us VI. Our Years rowl insensibly one after another and rowl without standing still one moment till our Death It is thither that every step we make leads us 't is there we all go like several Rivers which throw themselves into the Sea the Day and Hour of your Death will never come to your Knowledge Make your advantage of this Advice that is given you from the Mouth of Truth and continually be watchful VII Never put off the consideration of Dying to the Hour of your Death that moment is not proper to die well you ought to make it when you are in Health and your Mind undisturbed VIII If you would be watchful and think of Death you should seriously examin the Life you lead to see if it agree with that which you would lead when you are at the point of Death that is to die to the World and to all that you love in it before you die indeed IX If you be watchful and think of Death whilst you are living you will dye by a hearty and true forsaking the World and its Pleasures you will love a retired life you will be assiduous in Prayer you will mortifie your self as much as you can you will give liberally to the Poor you will exercise your self in good Works and you will fill your Mind with nothing but what may encrease your Faith your Hope and your Charity it is in the practice of these things without doubt that the care and right thinking of Death consists X. Children are afraid of their Fathers when they disguise themselves because they do not use to see them in that manner take away the Disguise you give to Death and it will not fright your any more Death is represented continually attended with a company of Physicians with the Tears of
a Wife and some Children crying it is imagin'd to enter into a Chamber where the Sun is shut out and lighted by Torches she is believ'd to walk sadly and to inspire Fears and sad Thoughts into all that look upon her Take but away from her what does not belong to her and what is given to her without Reason and you will easily be more familiarly acquainted with her and dispose your self to receive her as a Friend which is welcome to you XI He that fears not Death leads a life long pleasant and happy his life is like a Torch well lighted that is not put out suddenly but by little and little 'till all be consumed his life is like the Fruits that are not pluckt off the Trees 'till Nature has made them ripe and good and fall of themselves in Autumn when they are come to Maturity XII If you use your self often to think of Death you will die without Pain as you have lived without Trouble You will look upon Death with Eyes enlighten'd with Faith and Grace you will see her approach without Fear you will look upon her as the indispensible Law of Nature and you will submit to her without repugnance Nothing that usually frights on the like occasion will trouble you you will end your Days with so great quiet of Mind as if you had quitted nothing that was dear to you upon Earth nor any thing that Reason and Truth had made appear amiable Your Death will be so calm that the greatest Men may desire that theirs may be like it and to speak more justly your Death will not seem a Death but a ready passage to a more long and happy Life XIII It ought not to be said of a Man that he fears Death when you would only say that he thinks of Death often and that he sees it coming fast on In effect one does look upon things that he fears not as unhappiness or dangers that he ought to avoid or fly XIV The fear of Death oftentimes takes from us the pleasure of living and the love of Life oftentimes hinders us from Dying without Pain and so by false Ideas that we make to our selves both of the one and the other we make our Lives unpleasant and our Death unquiet Make good use of this Advice and regard both the one and the other with a sound and quick Eye and full of Faith XV. I shall conclude this Article with the Opinion of a Father of the Church that says that it is not Death that is terrible but the Opinion that a Man has of it And he adds that to die is not to be feared but to live in continual fear of Death is that which makes it terrible this Fear is not caused but by the Corruption of our Life and is never found in a good and Christian Life We see by Experience that good Men live in great Peace and tranquility of Mind and so likewise die in the same CHAP. XXVII Advice upon Friends and the concerns of Friendship I. MY Dear Children there are so many good Qualities required in a Man that one would make his Friend that it makes me wonder when I hear that some Men have a great many of them If the number of them be great from thence may be concluded assuredly that they are false Friends or that they only bear the Name of Friends but are not so indeed II. Think your self happy if you have one true Friend it is a Treasure that you ought to keep with care you ought to esteem it Riches enough to have found him and possess him and never to think of finding another III. The greatest part of Friends continue so not long You have found them at Play at your Recreations at a Ball in Walking or at Visits made to the same person Leave Gaming go no more to a Ball to a Comedy or to the Walks and be not so assiduous in your Visits and then adieu Friends you will lose them with the same facility you have gain'd them IV. When a Friend Treats us as we desire he should he does his Duty but when he uses us not according to what we expect then we are displeased but I do not know whether we are more sensible of the one than of the other I do not know whether three Kindnesses that he has done us obliges us so much as the hiding one Secret from us discontents us three Services already done us are soon forgotten by the refusing us a trifle VII To keep a Secret committed to us by a Friend is no great matter to boast of the obligation to it is so strict and natural that there needs but a little Reason and Justice to oblige us never to dispense with it but it is a most infamous action to reveal it the confidence he puts in us is the most essential mark of a sincere and true Friendship and likewise it is a most unpardonable Treachery to abuse that confidence and by revealing it betray him that hath trusted us VIII It happens often that a Friend who has given us a Hundred Proofs of his Friendship and who has been for Ten or a Dozen Years a faithful keeper of our most important Secrets quarrels with us for a thing of no consequence for a jealousie for a point of Honour in a word for a Word that has escaped us and this discreet Man who never spoke a Secret upon a sudden becomes like the Servant in Terrence who like a Vessel pierced can hold nothing This Person becomes an Echo which makes himself heard of all after this think how much you may trust a Friend and publish to the World what a Consolation it is to an honest Man to have a faithful Friend IX Friends ought to keep the same Silence and to have the same discretion which Confessors have the difference is that the one acts always naturally as Men the other not purely as Men but as fortified by the Grace of the Sacrament of their Order which they have received this is it that makes the first that they do not forget what they should keep secret but that by imprudence or Revenge they sometimes discover them whereas the latter whether they forget a Secret or do not forget it the Grace by the Sacrament of Order makes them act as if they had forgot it or as if they had never known it X. If you resolve and think it a great Pleasure to have a Friend be sure that you have but one As you have but one Confessor to commit the secrets of your Conscience to you also ought to have no more than one Friend to whom you commit the secrets of your Business and Temporal concerns If you change your Confessor you will find that the diversity of your Confessors and Directors will beget an inequality in the Conduct of your Life so it cannot be otherwise but that the change of your Friend will notably prejudice your Business and your concerns XI Of a Friend that