A26896:54
The Christians converse with God, or, The insufficiency and uncertainty of human friendship and…
The Christians converse with God, or, The insufficiency and uncertainty of human friendship and the improvement of solitude in converse with God with some of the author's breathings after him / by Richard Baxter ...
London: printed for John Salusbury, 1693
Modern spelling is a reading aid: the words are the author’s, only the spelling is modernized. Original shows the page as printed, with the transcription marks.
I might here also remember you how your friends may themselves be overcome with a temptation, and then become the more dangerous tempters of you, by how much the greater their interest is in your affections. If they be infected with error, they are the likest persons to ensnare you: If they be tainted with Covetousness or Pride, there is none so likely to draw you to the same sin: And so your friends may be in effect your most deadly Enemies, deceivers and destroyers.
15. And if you have friends that are never so firm and constant, they may prove (not only unable to relieve you) but very increasing to your grief. If they are afflicted in the participation of your sufferings, as your troubles are become theirs (without your ease) so their trouble for you will become yours, and so your stock of sorrow will be increased And they are mortals, and liable to distress as well as you. And therefore they are like to bear their share in several sorts of sufferings: And so friendship will make their sufferings to be yours: Their sicknesses ⟨p. 33⟩and pains, their fears and griefs, their wants and dangers will all be yours. And the more they are your hearty Friends, the more they will be yours. And so you will have as many additions to the proper burden of your griefs, as you have suffering Friends: When you do but hear that they are dead, you say as Thomas, Joh. 11.16. [Let us also go that we may die with him.] And having many such friends you will almost always have one or other of them in distress; and so be seldom free from sorrow; besides all that which is properly your own.
15. And if you have friends that are never so firm and constant, they may prove (not only unable to relieve you) but very increasing to your grief. If they are afflicted in the participation of your sufferings, as your troubles are become theirs (without your ease) so their trouble for you will become yours, and so your stock of sorrow will be encreased And they are mortals, and liable to distress as well as you. And therefore they are like to bear their share in several sorts of sufferings: And so friendship will make their sufferings to be yours: Their sicknesses