pertinent people, who are, it may be, loads to their families, but can never ease my loads: but my friend is a worthy person when he can become to me a guide or a support, an eye or a hand, a staff or a rule. There must be in friendship something to distinguish it from a companion and a countryman, from a schoolfellow or a gossip, from a sweetheart or a fellow-traveller. Friendship may look in at any one of these doors; but it stays not anywhere till it come to be the best thing in the world. And when we consider that one man is not better than another, neither towards God nor towards man, but by doing better and braver things, we shall also see that that which is most beneficent is also most excellent; and therefore those friendships must needs be most perfect where the friends can be most useful. For men cannot be useful but by worthinesses in the several instances; a fool cannot be relied upon for counsel, nor a vicious person for the advantages of virtue, nor a beggar for relief, nor a stranger for conduct, nor a tattler to keep a secret, nor a pitiless person trusted with my complaint, nor a covetous man with my child's fortune, nor a false person without a witness, nor a suspicious person with a private design, nor him that I fear with the treasures of my love; but he that is wise and virtuous, rich and at hand, close and merciful, free of his money, and tenacious of a secret, open and ingenuous, true and honest, is of himself an excellent man, and therefore fit to be loved; and he can do good to me in all capacities where I can need him, and therefore is fit to be a friend. I confess we are forced, in our friendships, to abate some of these ingredients; but full measures of friendship would have full measures of worthiness; and according as any defect is in the foundation, in the relation also there may be imperfection: and indeed I shall not blame the friendship so it be worthy, though it be not perfect; not only because friendship is charity, which cannot be perfect here, but because there is not in the world a perfect cause of perfect friendship. Can any wise or good man be angry if I say I choose this man to be my friend because he is able to give me counsel, to restrain my wanderings, to comfort me in my sorrows; he is pleasant to be in private, and useful in public; he will make my joys double, and divide my grief between himself and me? For what else should I choose? For being a fool and useless? For a pretty face and a smooth skin? Measures of Friendship. 104. Robert Leighton, 1613-1684. (Handbook, par. 389.) It is of him and his works, that Coleridge exclaims: 'I bless the hour that introduced me to the knowledge of the evangelical, apostolical Leighton. April, 1814.', Notes, il. 120. Love Unfeigned. Love must be unfeigned. It appears that this dissimulation is a disease that is very incident in this particular. The apostle St. Paul hath the same word (Rom. xii. 19), and the apostle St. John to the same sense (1 John iii. 18). That it have that double reality, which is opposed to double dissembled love; that it be cordial and effectual; that the professing of it arise from truth of affection, and as much as may be, be seconded by action; that both the heart and the hand may be rather the seal of it than the tongue; not court holy-water, an empty noise of service and affection, that fears nothing more than to be put upon trial. Although thy brother with whom thou conversest cannot, it may be, see through thy false appearances, he that commands this love, looks chiefly within, seeks it there, and if he finds it not there, hates them most that most pretend it; so that the art of dissembling, though never so well studied, cannot pass in this King's court, to whom all hearts are open and all desires known. When after variances men are brought to an agreement, they are much subject to this, rather to cover their remaining malices with superficial verbal forgiveness, than to dislodge them, and free the heart of them. This is a poor self-deceit; as the philosopher said to him, that being ashamed that he was espied by him in a tavern in an outer room, withdrew himself into the inner, he called after him- That is not the way out; the more you go that way, you will be the farther within.' Commentary on 1 Peter i. 22. He himself bare our Sins. In this expression of his sufferings we are to consider-The commutation of the persons, he himself for us; and the work undertaken to be performed, he bare our sins in his own body on the tree. The act or sentence of the law against the breach of it standing in force, and divine justice expecting satisfaction, death was the necessary and inseparable consequent of sin. If you say the Supreme Majesty of God being accountable to none, might have forgiven all without satisfaction; we are not to contest that, nor foolishly to offer to sound the bottomless depth of his absolute prerogative. Christ implies in his prayer that it was impossible that he could escape that cup: but the impossibility is resolved into the will of the Father... Justice might indeed have seized on rebellious man and laid the pronounced punishment on him; mercy might have freely acquitted him and pardoned all · but can we name any place where mercy and justice, as relating to condemned man, could have met and shined jointly in full aspect, save only in Jesus Christ. Commentary, ch. ii., v. 24. Saints made holy on Earth. This is a truth if there be any in religion: they who are not made saints in a state of grace, shall never be saints in glory. The stones which are appointed for that glorious temple above are hewn and polished and prepared for it here; as the stones were wrought and prepared in the mountain for building the temple at Jerusalem. Ib., chap. i. 2. Faith causes the soul to find all that is spoken of Christ in the word and his beauty there represented to be abundantly true, makes it really taste of his sweetness, and by that possesses the heart more strongly with his love, persuading it of the truth of those things not by reasons and arguments, but by an expressible kind of evidence that they only know that have it. [Grant it, grant it me, O Lord.-COLERIDGE, Notes ii. 125.] This sweet stream of the doctrine [of the prophets] did as the rivers make its own banks fertile and pleasant as it ran by, and flowed still forward to after ages, and by the confluence of more such prophecies grew greater as it went till it fell in with the main current of the gospel in the New Testament, both acted and preached by the great Prophet himself, whom they foretold to come, and recorded by his apostles and evangelists, and thus united into one river clear as crystal. This doctrine of salvation in the Scripture hath still refreshed the city of God, his church under the gospel, and still shall do so, till it empty itself into the ocean of eternity. [In the whole course of my studies I do not remember to have read so beautiful an allegory as this, so various and detailed, and yet so just and so natural.-COLERIDGE. 105. John Pearson, 1612-1687. (Handbook, pars. 382, 474-) Reconciliation. In which deductions of truths we may easily perceive that the forgiveness of sins which is promised unto us, which we upon that promise do believe, containeth in it a reconciliation of an offended God and a satisfaction unto a just God; it containeth a reconciliation, as without which God cannot be conceived to remit; it comprehendeth a satisfaction, as without which God I was resolved not to be reconciled. For the first of these, we may be assured of forgiveness of sins, because Christ by his death hath reconciled God unto us, who was offended by our sins; and that he hath done so we are assured because he which before was angry with us, upon the consideration of Christ's death, became propitious to us, and did ordain Christ's death to be a propitiation for us. For God loved us, and sent his Son to be the propitiation for our sins (Rom. iii. 24, 25; 1 John ii. 1, 2; iv. 10). It is evident therefore that Christ did render God propitious unto us by his blood (that is, his sufferings unto death) who before was offended with us for our sins. And this propitiation amounted to a reconciliation; that is, a kindness after wrath. We must conceive that God was angry with mankind before he determined to give our Saviour; we cannot imagine that God, who is essentially just, should not abominate iniquity. The great affection we can conceive in him upon the lapse of man, is wrath and indignation. God therefore was most certainly offended before he gave a Redeemer; and though it is most true, that he so loved the world that he gave his only begotten Son, yet there is no incongruity in this that a Father should be offended with that Son which he loveth, and at that time offended with him when he loveth him. Notwithstanding therefore that God loved men whom he created, yet he was offended with them when they sinned, and gave his Son to suffer for them that through that Son's obedience he might be reconciled to them. This reconciliation is clearly delivered in the Scriptures as wrought by Christ. For all are of God, who hath reconciled us to himself by Jesus Christ (2 Cor. v. 18); and that by virtue of his death, for when we were enemies we were reconciled unto God by the death of his Son (Rom. v. 10), making peace through the blood of his cross, and by him reconciling all things unto him self (Col. i. 10). . . . That is, notwithstanding he was offended with us for our sins, by the death of his Son we were restored to favour again. An Exposition of the Creed, vol. i., 1st Ed.. 1659. 106. Henry Vaughan, 1618-1695. (Handbook, par. 159.) Morning. When first thy eyes unveil, give thy soul leave The spirit's duty; true hearts spread and heave Give Him thy first thoughts then, so shalt thou keep Yet never sleep the sun up: prayer should Serve God before the world: let him not go |