The divine life in three treatises

And as the friends that Love us most, and have most interest in our esteem and Love, may do more than others, in tempting us to be unfaithful to our Lord, to entertain any error, to commit any sin, or to flinch in suffering; so when God hath permitted them to forsake us, and to lose their too great interest in us, we are fortified against all such temptations from them. I have known where a former intimate friend hath grown strange, and broken former friendship, and quickly after turned to such dangerous ways and errors, as convinced the other of the mercifulness of God, in weakening his temptation by his friends desertion; who might else have drawn him along with him into sin. And I have often observed, ⟨p. 320⟩that when the husbands have turned from Religion to Infidelity, Familism, or some dangerous heresy, that God hath permitted them to hate and abuse their wives so inhumanely, as that it preserved the poor women from the temptation of following them in their Apostasy or sin: When as some other women with whom their husbands have dealt more kindly, have been drawn away with them into pernicious paths.

And as the friends that Love us most, and have most interest in our esteem and Love, may do more than others, in tempting us to be unfaithful to our Lord, to entertain any errour, to commit any sin, or to flinch in suffering; so when God hath permitted them to forsake us, and to lose their too great interest in us, we are fortified against all such temptations from them. I have known where a former intimate friend hath grown strange, and broken former friendship, and quickly after turned to such dangerous wayes and errours, as convinced the other of the mercifulness of God, in weakning his temptation by his friends desertion; who might else have drawn him along with him into sin. And I have often observed, ⟨p. 320⟩that when the husbands have turned from Religion to Infidelity, Familism, or some dangerous heresie, that God hath permitted them to hate and abuse their wives so inhumanely, as that it preserved the poor women from the temptation of following them in their Apostasie or sin: When as some other women with whom their husbands have dealt more kindly, have been drawn away with them into pernicious paths.