Direct. IV. Use as little affectation or ceremony with your friend as may be; but let all your converse with him be with openness of heart, that he may see that you both trust him, and deal with him in plain sincerity. If dissimulation and forced affectation be but once discovered, it tendeth to breed a constant diffidence and suspicion. And if it be an infirmity of your own which you think needeth such a cover, the cloak will be of worse effect, than the knowledge of your infirmity.
Direct. V. Be ever faithful to your friend, for the cure of all his faults; and never turn friendship into flattery: yet still let all be done in love, though in a friendly freedom, and closeness of admonition. It is not the least benefit of intimate friendship, that what an enemy speaketh behind our backs, a friend will open plainly to our faces. To watch over one another daily, and be as a glass to show our faces or faults to one another, is the very great benefit of true friendship. Eccles. iv. 9-11, "Two are better than one, because they have a good reward for their labour. For if they fall, the one will lift up his fellow: but woe to him that is alone when he falleth, for he hath not another to help him up." It is a flatterer and not a friend, that will please you by concealing or extenuating your sin.
Direct. VI. Abhor selfishness as most contrary to real friendship. Let your friend be as yourself, and his interest as your own. If we must love our neighbour as ourselves, much more our dearest bosom friends.
Direct. VII. Understand what is most excellent and useful in your friend, and that improve. Much good is lost by a dead-hearted companion, that will neither broach the vessel and draw that out which is ready for their use; nor yet feed any good discourse, by due questions or answers, but stifle all by barren silence. And a dull, silent hearer, will weary and silence the speaker at the last.
Direct. VIII. Resolve to bear with each other's infirmities: be not too high in your expectations from each other; look not for exactness and innocence, but for human infirmities, that when they fall out, you may not find yourselves disappointed. Patience is necessary in all human converse.
Direct. IX. Yet do not suffer friendship to blind you, to own or extenuate the faults of your dearest friend. For that will be sinful partiality, and will be greatly injurious to God, and treachery against the soul and safety of your friend.
Direct. X. And watch lest the love, estimation, or reverence of your friend, should draw you to entertain his errors, or to imitate him in any sinful way. It is no part of true friendship to prefer men before the truth of Christ, nor to take any heretical, dividing, or sensual infection from our friend, and so to die and perish with him; nor is it friendly to desire it.
Direct. XI. Never speak against your friend to a third person; nor open his dishonourable weakness to another. As no man can serve two masters, so no man can well please two contrary friends: and if you whisper to one the failings of another, it tendeth directly to the dissolution of your friendship.
Direct. XII. Think not that love will warrant your partial, erroneous estimation of your friend. You may judge him fittest for your intimacy; but you must not judge him better than all other men, unless you have special evidence of it, as the reason of such a judgment.
Direct. XIII. Let not the love of your friend draw you to love all, or any others, the less, and below their worth. Let not friendship make you narrow-hearted, and confine your charity to one: but give all their due, in your valuation and your conversation, and exercise as large a charity and benignity as possibly you can; especially to societies, churches, and commonwealth, and to all the world. It is a sinful friendship, which robbeth others of your charity; especially those to whom much more is due than to your friend.