Spiritual Friendship: Learning to Be Friends with God and One Another

Chapter 5: Choosing Spiritual Friends (Book 3.1–38)

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Other Characteristics to Avoid When Looking for a Friend (3.28−30)

28. Finally, let us consider it a poison to friendship to slander a friend, the deed which caused Miriam’s face to break out with leprosy, and caused her to be cast out of the camp and deprived of fellowship with her people for six days ( Num 12:1–15 ). Not only ought we to avoid choosing as friends those who are prone to excessive anger, but also those who are flighty and suspicious as well. For since the great fruit of friendship is the confidence with which you may believe your friend and entrust yourself to him, how can you have any confidence at all in one who is blown about by every breeze, or who gives his assent to each and every plan? Such a man’s affections are like soft clay, receiving and forming different and contradictory images all day long, according to the will of the one making the impression at the time. 29. Moreover, what is more fitting to friendship than that mutual peace and tranquility of heart which a suspicious man never knows, because he can never rest? For inquisitiveness always accompanies the suspicious man, goading him constantly and sharply, and supplying him with the sources of restlessness and worry. Thus, whenever he sees his friend speaking rather confidentially with someone else, he will immediately suspect that he is being betrayed. And if the suspicious man’s friend shows himself to be well-disposed toward another, or pleasant, he will immediately complain that his friend esteems him less. If he is ever corrected by his friend, he will take the correction as a sign of dislike; even if his friend thinks