This beautiful and quaint passage will show how Osorius finds illustration in Scripture. I translate a few more specimens of his style.
“Behold how He loved him. St. Thomas explains this passage admirably when he says, quoting the wise man, Nothing doth countervail a faithful friend, and his excellency is invaluable, for a faithful friend is worthy of love: and yet, a faithful man who can find? He is a faithful friend who is stable in friendship; not forgetting a first friend when a new one arrives, nor when exalted in prosperity forgetful of the friend in poverty, nor despising the friend who is cast down.
“God will be found the most faithful friend, in that He never forgets former friends for the sake of new ones; but those whom He chose before time was, these will He love in eternity, when time is no more. Neither does the addition of new friends make the former less the friends of God, but rather the more grateful is it to Him that many should love Him. Nor is Christ like the chief butler, who, when things went well with him, forgot Joseph; but though the Lord be high, yet hath He respect unto the lowly. Christ, when mortal, chose men to be His friends; when made immortal, He called them His brethren. Go to My brethren, and say unto them, &c. (John xx. 17). Nor is the friendship of Christ capable of change through loss of the friend, as is evident from the eleventh chapter of St. John. Now Jesus loved Martha, and her sister, and Lazarus, when they were hale and sound. But what will He do when Lazarus is sick? Lord, behold he whom Thou lovest is sick; He ceases not to love because His friend is sick. Lazarus dies, the misery increases, but friendship does not decrease; for He says, Our friend Lazarus sleepeth. Lazarus is not called friend because that he loves, but because he is still beloved. Now Lazarus stinketh, and still Christ is his friend, for He weepeth because of him. Behold, they say, how He loved him! Ill, O multitude, do you speak! to Him love is present, therefore rather say, Behold how He loveth him! O most faithful Friend, Thou art He who sayest, I have loved thee with an everlasting love!
“Far otherwise are we toward Christ. He is in bonds, and lo! Peter swears that he knows Him not. O man! if you seek a true friend, seek first Christ, who changeth not. What think you is the friendship of the world? What the friendship of the flesh? You have three friends. You are in peril, for you are summoned before the king to be tried, and sentenced for high treason. You go to your first friend, and tell him your danger, and ask of him assistance. He replies that he will accompany you as far as the judgment hall, and leave you there. ‘Do you settle your affair with the king; I can do no more for you.’ Seeing that there is no help to be gotten from this friend, you turn to the second, and ask of him succour. He replies, ‘When you are executed, I will wrap your body in some old and cast-off linen, for a shroud.’ You go to the third, and he says, ‘I will be your advocate. I will assist you, and will liberate you. I will pacify the king, and, if need be, I will die in your room.’ Is not this a faithful friend? Now those who enter into compact of friendship with their flesh, which of these friends have they got? The first, which will accompany you only to the gate of death. Cherish the flesh, love it, and it will be a Delilah to you, handing you over to your enemies, leaving your soul before the Judge, without accompanying it. The world resembles the second friend, to please which you must torture yourself, but all it will give you in the end will be the shroud to enwrap your dead body. But Christ is the third friend, the faithful one, our advocate, who, to liberate us, endured death for us; He who accompanies us to the judgment, who frees us, who protects us! Let Him be our friend who truly loves us. We love God because He first loved us.”
I conclude with the following striking passage:—
“Are ye able to drink of the cup that I shall drink of? Being desirous of alluring His disciples to drink of the cup, He expounds to them its sweetness, when He says that He will drink of it first. And, in sooth, if we were faithful to God, this reason would be sufficient to make us drink it readily. But, as says the wise man, most men will proclaim every one his own goodness: but a faithful man who can find? There is not a son, there is not a servant, who acts as faithlessly with his father or his master as we act towards God. Would you know that of a certainty? I tell you be loth to sin, be ready to die rather than sin.
“Ah! but you say, I like to sin. I ask you, Upon what grounds do you persist in sinning? Well, you say, God is so good; He loves me, He is ready to pardon. So this is the reason why you continue in sin! And what though you know this for certain, where is your fidelity? where is your Christian honour? Does a wife act in this manner with her husband? a son with his father? a servant with his lord? I pray you bid your wife act in this manner towards you. Say to her, ‘Be chaste.’ She will say, ‘That is no concern of mine. I know full well that you are good, that you love me, and that if I were an adulteress you would pardon me.’ And if it were so, would this answer of your wife gratify you? Why! where would be the honour of a good woman? where her fidelity? Would it be deemed sufficient by you, if she were an adulteress and were reconciled to her husband? Does any minister act thus? You say to the royal minister, ‘Beware lest thou plot treason against your master.’ He replies, ‘He is an excellent king; he loves me, he will most certainly pardon me even if I do turn traitor.’ O vilest of men! O man truly without honour! where is the fidelity which you owe to your monarch?
“Vilest Christian of the household of Faith, unfaithful and destitute of honour! how continue to sin? how do you still commit adultery against God? how are you so traitorous to your King? You say: He will pardon me. Be it so. Yet where is your fidelity? where your honour? Is it sufficient to be reconciled, to be a pardoned traitor? Is it not far better to be able to say, I never was a traitor?
“Now let us turn to the subject. If we are faithful servants of God, enough for us that He has said, The cup that I shall drink of, to make us thirst for that cup. He drank thereof before thee; wilt thou not quaff of it out of love for Him? Is there a faithful soldier who would see his sovereign enter the battle, and fight amongst the foe, and withdraw himself, leaving his king alone, and betake himself to his sports? Hear what Uriah said, The ark, and Israel, and Judah, abide in tents; and my lord Joab, and the servants of my lord, are encamped in the open fields; shall I then go into mine house? How different also she who said, My Beloved is mine, and I am His. Bernard says, ‘In no other way can man respond to his God in these same words, except by love, and by drinking of the cup.’ God gives thee gifts; thou canst give Him nothing. I will take no bullock out of thine house. God beatifies thee; thou canst not beatify Him, except by love and suffering. God loves thee; love Him thou canst. He suffered for thee; suffer for Him thou canst. Thus mayest thou render unto Him what thou hast received of Him, and return, as it were, like for like to thy God.”