greatest ingredients which constitute friendship and express it But there needs no other measures of friendship but that it may be as great as you can express it beyond death it cannot go to death it may when the cause is reasonable and just charitable and religious and yet if there be any thing greater than to suffer death and pain and shame to some are more insufferable a true and noble friendship shrinks not at the greatest trials And yet there is a limit even to friendship It must be as great as our friend fairly needs in all things where we are not tied up by a former duty to God to our selves or some pre-obliging relative When Pollux heard some body whisper a reproach against his Brother Castor he killed the slanderer with his fist that was a zeal which his friendship could not warrant Nulla est excusatio si amici causâ peccaveris said Cicero No friendship can excuse a sin And this the braver Romans instanced in the matter of duty to their Country It is not lawful to fight on our friends part against our Prince or Country and therefore when Caius Blosius of Cuma in the sedition of Gracchus appeared against his Country when he was taken he answered That he loved Tiberius Gracchus so dearly that he thought fit to follow him whithersoever he led and begg'd pardon upon that account They who were his Judges were so noble that though they knew it no fair excuse yet for the honour of friendship they did not directly reject his motion but put him to death because he did not follow but led on Gracchus and brought his friend into the snare For so they preserved the honours of friendship on either hand by neither suffering it to be sullied by a foul excuse nor yet rejected in any fair pretence A man may not be perjured for his friend I remember to have read in the History of the Low-countries that Grimston and Redhead when Bergenapzoom was besieged by the Duke of Parma acted for the interest of the Queen of Englands Forces a notable design but being suspected and put for their acquittance to take the Sacrament of the Altar they dissembled their persons and their interest their design and their religion and did for the Queens service as one wittily wrote to her give not only their bodies but their souls and so deserved a reward greater than she could pay them I cannot say this is a thing greater than a friendship can require for it is not great at all but a great villany which hath no name and no order in worthy entercourses and no obligation to a friend can reach as high as our duty to God And he that does a base thing in zeal for his friend burns the golden thred that ties their hearts together it is a conspiracy but no longer friendship And when Cato lent his Wife to Hortensius and Socrates lent his to a merry Greek they could not amongst wise persons obtain so much as the fame of being worthy friends neither could those great Names legitimate an unworthy action under the most plausible title It is certain that amongst friends their estates are common that is by whatsoever I can rescue my friend from calamity I am to serve him or not to call him friend there is a great latitude in this and it is to be restrained by no prudence but when there is on the other side a great necessity neither vicious nor avoidable A man may chuse whether he will or no and he does not sin in not doing it unless he have bound himself to it But certainly friendship is the greatest band in the world and if he have professed a great friendship he hath a very great obligation to do that and more and he can no ways be disobliged but by the care of his Natural relations I said Friendship is the greatest bond in the world and I had reason for it for it is all the bands that this world hath and there is no society and there is no relation that is worthy but it is made so by the communications of friendship and by partaking some of its excellencies For friendship is a transcendent and signifies as much as Vnity can mean and every consent and every pleasure and every benefit and every society is the Mother or the Daughter of friendship Some friendships are made by nature some by contract some by interest and some by souls And in proportion to these ways of Uniting so the friendships are greater or less vertuous or natural profitable or holy or all this together Nature makes excellent friendships of which we observe something in social parts growing better in each others neighbourhood than where they stand singly And in animals it is more notorious whose friendships extend so far as to herd and dwell together to play and feed to defend and fight for one another and to cry in absence and to rejoyce in one anothers presence But these friendships have other names less noble they are sympathy or they are instinct But if to this natural friendship there be reason superadded something will come in upon the stock of reason which will ennoble it but because no Rivers can rise higher than Fountains reason shall draw out all the dispositions which are in Nature and establish them into friendships but they cannot surmount the communications of Nature Nature can make no friendships greater than her own excellencies Nature is the way of contracting necessary friendships that is by nature such friendships are contracted without which we cannot live and be educated or be well or be at all In this scene that of Parents and Children is the greatest which indeed is begun in nature but is actuated by society and mutual endearments For Parents love their Children because they love themselves Children being but like emissions of water symbolical or indeed the same with the fountain and they in their posterity see the images and instruments of a civil immortality but if Parents and Children do not live together we see their friendships and their loves are much abated and supported only by fame and duty by customs and religion which to nature are but artificial pillars and make this friendship to be complicated and to pass from its own kind to another That of Children to their Parents is not properly friendship but gratitude and interest and religion and whatever can supervene of the nature of friendship comes in upon another account upon society and worthiness and choice This relation on either hand makes great Dearnesses But it hath special and proper significations of it and there is a special duty incumbent on each other respectively This friendship and social relation is not equal and there is too much authority on one side and too much fear on the other to make equal friendships and therefore although this is one of the kinds of friendship that is of a social and relative love and conversation yet in the more
proper use of the word Friendship does do some things which Father and Son do not I instance in the free and open communicating counsels and the evenness and pleasantness of conversation and consequently the significations of the paternal and filial love as they are divers in themselves and unequal and therefore another kind of friendship than we mean in our inquiry so they are such a duty Which no other friendship can annul because their mutual duty is bound upon them by religion long before any other friendships can be contracted and therefore having first possession must abide for ever The duty and love to Parents must not yield to religion much less to any new friendships and our Parents are to be preferred before the Corban and are at no hand to be laid aside but when they engage against God That is in the rights which this relation and kind of friendship challenges as its propriety it is supreme and cannot give place to any other friendships till the Father gives his right away and God or the Laws consent to it as in the case of marriage emancipation and adoption to another family in which cases though love and gratitude are still obliging yet the societies and duties of relation are very much altered which in the proper and best friendships can never be at all But then this also is true that the social relations of Parents and Children not having in them all the capacities of a proper friendship cannot challenge all the significations of it that is it is no prejudice to the duty I owe there to pay all the dearnesses which are due here and to friends there are some things due which the other cannot challenge I mean my secret and my equal conversation and the pleasures and interests of these and the consequents of all Next to this is the society and dearness of Brothers and Sisters which usually is very great amongst worthy persons but if it be considered what it is in it self it is but very little there is very often a likeness of natural temper and there is a social life under the same roof and they are commanded to love one another and they are equals in many instances and are endeared by conversation when it is merry and pleasant innocent and simple without art and without design But Brothers pass not into noble friendships upon the stock of that relation they have fair dispositions and advantages and are more easie and ready to ferment into the greatest dearnesses if all things else be answerable Nature disposes them well towards it but in this inquiry if we ask what duty is passed upon a Brother to a Brother even for being so I answer that religion and our parents and God and the laws appoint what measures they please but nature passes but very little and friendship less and this we see apparently in those Brothers who live asunder and contract new relations and dwell in other societies There is no love no friendship without the entercourse of conversation Friendships indeed may last longer than our abode together but they were first contracted by it and established by pleasure and benefit and unless it be the best kind of friendship which that of Brothers in that meer capacity is not it dies when it wants the proper nutriment and support and to this purpose is that which was spoken by Solomon better is a neihbour that is near than a Brother that is far off that is although ordinarily Brothers are first possessed of the entries and fancies of friendship because they are of the first societies and conversations yet when that ceases and the Brother goes away so that he does no advantage no benefit of entercourse the neighbour that dwells by me with whom if I converse at all either he is my enemy and does and receives evil or if we converse in worthinesses and benefit and pleasant communication he is better in the laws and measures of friendship than my distant Brother And it is observable that Brother is indeed a word of friendship and charity and of mutual endearment and so is a title of the bravest society yet in all the Scripture there are no precepts given of any duty and comport which Brothers that is the descendents of the same parents are to have one towards another in that capacity and it is not because their nearness is such that they need none For Parents and children are nearer and yet need tables of duty to be described and for Brothers certainly they need it infinitely if there be any peculiar duty Cain and Abel are the great probation of that and you know who said Fratrum quoque gratia rara est It is not often you shall see Two Brothers live in amity But the Scripture which often describes the duty of Parents and Children never describes the duty of Brothers except where by Brethren are meant all that part of mankind who are tied to us by any vicinity and indearment of religion or country of profession and family of contract or society of love and the noblest friendships the meaning is that though fraternity alone be the endearment of some degrees of friendship without choice and without excellency yet the relation it self is not friendship and does not naturally infer it and that which is procured by it is but limited and little and though it may pass into it as other conversations may yet the friendship is accidental to it and enters upon other accounts as it does between strangers with this only difference that Brotherhood does oftentimes assist the valuation of those excellencies for which we entertain our friendships Fraternity is the opportunity and preliminary disposition to friendship and no more For if my brother be a fool or a vitious person the love to which nature and our first conversation disposes me does not end in friendship but in pity and fair provisions and assistances which is a demonstration that Brotherhood is but the inclination and address to friendship and though I will love a worthy Brother more than a worthy stranger if the worthiness be equal because the relation is something and being put into the scales against an equal worthiness must needs turn the ballance as every grain will do in an even weight yet when the relation is all the worthiness that is pretended it cannot stand in competition with a friend for though a friend-Brother is better than a friend-stranger where the friend is equal but the Brother is not yet a Brother is not better than a friend but as Solomons expression is there is a friend that is better than a Brother and to be born of the same parents is so accidental and extrinsick to a mans pleasure or worthiness or spiritual advantages that though it be very pleasing and useful that a Brother should be a friend yet it is no great addition to a friend that he also is a Brother there is something in it but not much But in short the
many intrigues and Labyrinths of Question and is like a long line so impossible to be perfectly straight and to have no declination in it when it is held by such a hand as yours that unless it be by material enquiries into the Articles of the Religion you can never hope to have just grounds of confidence In the mean time you can consider this if the Roman Church were the Catholick that is so as to exclude all that are not of her communion then the Greek Churches had as good turn Turks as remain damned Christians and all that are in the communion of all the other Patriarchal Churches in Christendom must also perish like Heathens which thing before any Man can believe he must have put off all reason and all modesty and all charity And who can with any probability think that the Communion of Saints in the Creed is nothing but the Communion of Roman Subjets and the Article of the Catholick Church was made up to dispark the inclosures of Jerusalem but to turn them into the pale of Rome and the Church is as limited as ever it was save only that the Synagogue is translated to Rome which I think you will easily believe was a Proposition the Apostles understood not But though it be hard to trust to it it is also so hard to prove it that you shall be able to understand the measures of that question and therefore your salvation can never depend upon it For no good or wise person can believe that God hath tied our Salvation to impossible measures or bound us to an Article that is not by us cognoscible or intends to have us conducted by that which we cannot understand and when you shall know that Learned men even of the Roman party are not agreed concerning the Catholick Church that is infallibly to guide you some saying that it is the virtual Church that is the Pope some that it is the representative Church that is a Council Some that it is the Pope and the Council the virtual Church and the representative Church together Some that neither of these nor both together are infallible but only the essential Church or the diffusive Church is the Catholick from whom we must at no hand dissent you will quickly find your self in a wood and uncertain whether you have more than a word in exchange for your soul when you are told you are in the Catholick Church But I will tell you what you may understand and see and feel something that your self can tell whether I say true or no concerning it You are now gone to a Church that protects it self by arts of subtilty and arms by violence and persecuting all that are not of their minds to a Church in which you are to be a Subject of the King so long as it pleases the Pope In which you may be absolved from your Vows made to God your Oaths to the King your Promises to Men your duty to your Parents in some cases A Church in which Men pray to God and to Saints in the same Form of words in which they pray to God as you may see in the Offices of Saints and particularly of our Lady a Church in which Men are taught by most of the principal Leaders to worship Images with the same worship with which they worship God and Christ or him or her whose Image it is and in which they usually picture God the Father and the holy Trinity to the great dishonour of that sacred mystery against the doctrine and practice of the Primitive Church against the express doctrine of Scripture against the honour of a Divine Attribute I mean the immensity and spirituality of the Divine Nature You are gone to a Church that pretends to be Infallible and yet is infinitely deceived in many particulars and yet endures no contradiction and is impatient her children should enquire into any thing her Priests obtrude You are gone from receiving the whole Sacrament to receive it but half from Christ's Institution to a humane invention from Scripture to uncertain Traditions and from ancient Traditions to new pretences from prayers which ye understood to prayers which ye understand not from confidence in God to rely upon creatures from intire dependence upon inward acts to a dangerous temptation of resting too much in outward ministeries in the external work of Sacraments and of Sacramentals You are gone from a Church whose worshipping is simple Christian and Apostolical to a Church where Mens consciences are loaden with a burden of Ceremonies greater than that in the days of the Jewish Religion for the Ceremonial of the Church of Rome is a great Book in Folio greater I say than all the Ceremonies of the Jews contained in Leviticus c. You are gone from a Church where you were exhorted to read the Word of God the holy Scriptures from whence you found instruction institution comfort reproof a treasure of all excellencies to a Church that seals up that fountain from you and gives you drink by drops out of such Cisterns as they first make and then stain and then reach out and if it be told you that some Men abuse Scripture it is true for if your Priests had not abused Scripture they could not thus have abused you but there is no necessity they should and you need not unless you list any more than you need to abuse the Sacraments or decrees of the Church or the messages of your friend or the Letters you receive or the Laws of the Land all which are liable to be abused by evil persons but not by good people and modest understandings It is now become a part of your Religion to be ignorant to walk in blindness to believe the Man that hears your Confessions to hear none but him not to hear God speaking but by him and so you are liable to be abused by him as he please without remedy You are gone from us where you were only taught to worship God through Jesus Christ and now you are taught to worship Saints and Angels with a worship at least dangerous and in some things proper to God for your Church worships the Virgin Mary with burning incense and candles to her and you give her presents which by the consent of all Nations used to be esteemed a worship peculiar to God and it is the same thing which was condemned for Heresie in the Collyridians who offered a Cake to the Virgin Mary A Candle and a Cake make no difference in the worship and your joyning God and the Saints in your worship and devotions is like the device of them that fought for King and Parliament the latter destroys the former I will trouble you with no more particulars because if these move you not to consider better nothing can But yet I have two things more to add of another nature one of which at least may prevail upon you whom I suppose to have a tender and a religious Conscience The first is That