A Christian Directory, Part 4: Christian Politics

by Richard Baxter

5. It oft maketh men ill members of the church and commonwealth. For it contracteth that love to one overvalued person, which should be diffused abroad among many; and the common good, which should be loved above any single person, is by this means neglected (as God himself): which maketh wives, and children, and bosom friends become those gulfs that swallow up the estates of most rich men; so that they do little good with them to the public state, which should be preferred.

6. Over-much friendship engageth us in more duty than we are well able to perform, without neglecting our duty to God, the commonwealth, and our own souls. There is some special duty followeth all special acquaintance; but a bosom friend will expect a great deal. You must allow him much of your time in conference, upon all occasions; and he looketh that you should be many ways friendly and useful to him, as he is or would be to you. When, alas, frail man can do but little: our time is short; our strength is small; our estates and faculties are narrow and low. And that time which you must spend with your bosom friend; where friendship is not moderated and wisely managed, is perhaps taken from God and the public good, to which you first owed it. Especially if you are magistrates, ministers, physicians, schoolmasters, or such other as are of public usefulness. Indeed if you have a sober, prudent friend, that will look but for your vacant hours, and rather help you in your public service, you are happy in such a friend. But that is not the excess of love that I am reprehending.

7. This inordinate friendship prepareth for disappointments, yea, and for excess of sorrows. Usually experience will tell you that your best friends are but uncertain and imperfect men, and will not answer your expectation; and perhaps some of them may so grossly fail you, as to set light by you, and prove your adversaries. I have seen the bonds of extraordinary dearness many ways dissolved: one hath been overcome by the flesh, and turned drunkard and sensual, and so proved unfit for intimate friendship (who yet sometime seemed of extraordinary uprightness and zeal). Another hath taken up some singular conceits in religion, and joined to some sect where his bosom friend could not follow him. And so it hath seemed his duty to look with strangeness, contempt, or pity on his ancient friend, as one that is dark and low, if not supposed an adversary to the truth, because he espouseth not all his misconceits. Another is suddenly lifted up with some preferment, dignity, and success, and so is taken with higher things and higher converse, and thinks it is very fair, to give an embrace to his ancient friend, for what he once was to him, instead of continuing such endearedness. Another had changed his place and company, and so by degrees grown very indifferent to his ancient friend, when he is out of sight, and converse ceaseth. Another hath himself chosen his friend amiss, in his unexperienced youth, or in a penury of wise and good men, supposing him much better than he was; and afterwards hath had experience of many persons of far greater wisdom, piety, and fidelity, whom therefore reason commanded him to prefer. All these are ordinary dissolvers of these bonds of intimate and special friendship.

And if your love continue as hot as ever, its excess is like to be your excessive sorrow. For, 1. You will be the more grieved at every suffering of your friend, as sicknesses, losses, crosses, &c. whereof so many attend mankind, as is like to make your burden great. 2. Upon every removal, his absence will be the more troublesome to you. 3. All incongruities and fallings-out will be the more painful to you, especially his jealousies, discontents, and passions, which you cannot command. 4. His death, if he die before you, will be the more grievous, and your own the more unwelcome, because you must part with him. These and abundance of sore afflictions are the ordinary fruits of too strong affections; and it is no rare thing for the best of God's servants to profess, that their sufferings from their friends who have overloved them, have been ten times greater than from all the enemies that ever they had in the world.

And to those that are wavering about this case, Whether only a common friendship with all men according to their various worth, or a bosom intimacy with some one man, be more desirable? I shall premise a free confession of my own case, whatever censures for it I incur. When I was first awakened to the regard of things spiritual and eternal, I was exceedingly inclined to a vehement love to those that I thought the most serious saints, and especially to that intimacy with some one, which is called friendship; by which I found extraordinary benefit, and it became a special mercy to my soul. But it was by more than one or two of the aforementioned ways, that the strict bond of extraordinary friendship hath been relaxed, and my own excessive esteem of my most intimate friends confuted. And since then I have learned to love all men according to their real worth, and to let out my love more extensively and without respect of persons, acknowledging all that is good in all; but with a double love and honour to the excellently wise and good; and to value men more for their public usefulness, than for their private suitableness to me; and yet to value the ordinary converse of one or a few suitable friends, before a more public and tumultuary life, except when God is publicly worshipped, or when public service inviteth me to deny the quiet of a private life: and though I more difference between man and man than ever, I do it not upon so slight and insufficient grounds as in the time of my unexperienced credulity; nor do I expect to find any without the defects, and blots, and failings of infirm, imperfect, mutable man.

Quest. X. What qualifications should direct us in the choice of a special bosom friend?

Answ. 1. He must be one that is sincere and single-hearted, and not given to affectation, or any thing that is much forced in his deportment; plain, and open-hearted to you, and not addicted to a hiding, fraudulent, or reserved carriage.

2. He must be one that is of a suitable temper and disposition; I mean not guilty of all your own infirmities, but not guilty of a crossness or contrariety of disposition. As if one be in love with plainness of apparel, and frugality in diet and course of life, and the other be guilty of curiosity, and ostentation, and prodigality; if one be for few words, and the other for many; if one be for labour, and the other for idleness, and frequent interruptions; if one be for serving the humours of men, and the other for a contempt of human censure, in the way of certain duty; these disparities make them unfit for this sort of bosom friendship.

3. He must not be a slave to any vice; for that which maketh him false to God, and to betray his own soul, may make him false to man, and to betray his friend.

4. He must not be a selfish person; that is, corruptly and partially for himself, and for his own carnal ends and interest. For such a one hath no true love to others, but when you seem cross to his own interest, his pleasure, wealth, or honour he will forsake you; for so he doth by God himself.