The Christians converse with God, or, The insufficiency and uncertainty of human friendship and…

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 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 ⟨p. 30⟩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 your selves too friendly to your sins.

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 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 ⟨p. 30⟩as if you were innocent, you will but shew that you understand not the nature of true friendship, nor the use of a true friend; and are yet your selves 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 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 would tend to set you free: They may think to ease your troubled minds by such words as shall increase