Christs temptation and transfiguration practically explained and improved in several sermons /

3. Though we owe this Religious Friendship to all that fear God, yet some few may be chosen for our Intimacy and spiritual Solace. We owe it in some respects to all that fear God and must dispense the General Acts of Friendship to them, Acts 4. 32. The multitude of them that believed, were of one heart and of one soul; and Christian Love is called [Greek or Hebrew], the bond of perfectness, Col. 3. 14. because it is the band by which Holy and Christian Societies called Churches are bound together and preserved; otherwise, like a Besom unbound they fall all to pieces; but yet this doth not hinder but that some may be chosen for our intimacy. Christ that denied himself ⟨p. 20⟩so many of the commodities of Humane Life would not live without special Friends, and would enjoy this virtuous Solace, and in David and Jonathan we have an Instance of it, 1 Sam. 18. 1. And the soul of Jonathan was knit to the Soul of David. Certainly too many cannot perform the acts of intimate Friendship to us, nor we to them; the Love being like a River dispersed into several Channels, must needs be shallower and weaker; therefore our choice Friends must be but few, inter binos & bonos, was the old Rule, though it need not be so strictly confined.

3. Though we owe this Religious Friendship to all that fear God, yet some few may be chosen for our Intimacy and spiritual Solace. We owe it in some respects to all that fear God and must dispense the General Acts of Friendship to them, Acts 4. 32. The multitude of them that believed, were of one heart and of one soul; and Christian Love is called 〈non-Latin alphabet〉, the bond of perfectness, Col. 3. 14. because it is the band by which Holy and Christian Societies called Churches are bound together and preserved; otherwise, like a Besom unbound they fall all to pieces; but yet this doth not hinder but that some may be chosen for our intimacy. Christ that denied himself