of friends. [4596]"As the sun is in the firmament, so is friendship in the world,” a most divine and heavenly band.  As nuptial love makes, this perfects mankind, and is to be preferred (if you will stand to the judgment of [4597]Cornelius Nepos) before affinity or consanguinity; plus in amiciticia valet similitudo morum, quam affinitas, &c., the cords of love bind faster than any other wreath whatsoever.  Take this away, and take all pleasure, joy, comfort, happiness, and true content out of the world; ’tis the greatest tie, the surest indenture, strongest band, and, as our modern Maro decides it, is much to be preferred before the rest.

[4598] “Hard is the doubt, and difficult to deem,
        When all three kinds of love together meet;
        And do dispart the heart with power extreme,
        Whether shall weigh the balance down; to wit,
        The dear affection unto kindred sweet,
        Or raging fire of love to women kind,
        Or zeal of friends, combin’d by virtues meet;
        But of them all the band of virtuous mind,
        Methinks the gentle heart should most assured bind.

        For natural affection soon doth cease,
        And quenched is with Cupid’s greater flame;
        But faithful friendship doth them both suppress,
        And them with mastering discipline doth tame,
        Through thoughts aspiring to eternal fame. 
        For as the soul doth rule the earthly mass,
        And all the service of the body frame,
        So love of soul doth love of body pass,
        No less than perfect gold surmounts the meanest brass.”

[4599]A faithful friend is better than [4600]gold, a medicine of misery, [4601]an only possession; yet this love of friends, nuptial, heroical, profitable, pleasant, honest, all three loves put together, are little worth, if they proceed not from a true Christian illuminated soul, if it be not done in ordine ad Deum for God’s sake.  “Though I had the gift of prophecy, spake with tongues of men and angels, though I feed the poor with all my goods, give my body to be burned, and have not this love, it profiteth me nothing,” 1 Cor. xiii. 1, 3. ’tis splendidum peccatum, without charity.  This is an all-apprehending love, a deifying love, a refined, pure, divine love, the quintessence of all love, the true philosopher’s stone, Non potest enim, as [4602]Austin infers, veraciter amicus esse hominis, nisi fuerit ipsius primitus veritatis, He is no true friend that loves not God’s truth.  And therefore this is true love indeed, the cause of all good to mortal men, that reconciles all creatures, and glues them together in perpetual amity and firm league; and can no more abide bitterness, hate, malice, than fair and foul weather, light and darkness, sterility and plenty may be together; as the sun in the firmament (I say), so is love in the world; and for this cause ’tis love without an addition, love [Greek: