kinde:  yet wil I not perswade any man to confound their rules, for so a man might be deceived.  In these other strict friendships a man must march with the bridle of wisdome and precaution in his hand:  the bond is not so strictly tied but a man may in some sort distrust the same.  Love him (said Chilon) as if you should one day hate him againe.  Hate him as if you should love him againe.  This precept, so abhominable in this soveraigne and mistris Amitie, is necessarie and wholesome in the use of vulgar and customarie friendships:  toward which a man must employ the saying Aristotle was wont so often repeat, “Oh you my friends, there is no perfect friend.”

In this noble commerce, offices and benefits (nurses of other amities) deserve not so much as to bee accounted of:  this confusion so full of our wills is cause of it:  for even as the friendship I beare unto my selfe, admits no accrease, [Footnote:  Increase.] by any succour I give my selfe in any time of need, whatsoever the Stoickes allege; and as I acknowledge no thanks unto my selfe for any service I doe unto myselfe, so the union of such friends, being truly perfect, makes them lose the feeling of such duties, and hate, and expell from one another these words of division, and difference:  benefit, good deed, dutie, obligation, acknowledgement, prayer, thanks, and such their like.  All things being by effect common betweene them; wils, thoughts, judgements, goods, wives, children, honour, and life; and their mutual agreement, being no other than one soule in two bodies, according to the fit definition of Aristotle, they can neither lend or give ought to each other.  See here the reason why Lawmakers, to honour marriage with some imaginary resemblance of this divine bond, inhibite donations between husband and wife; meaning thereby to inferre, that all things should peculiarly bee proper to each of them, and that they have nothing to divide and share together.  If in the friendship whereof I speake, one might give unto another, the receiver of the benefit should binde his fellow.  For, each seeking more than any other thing to doe each other good, he who yeelds both matter and occasion, is the man sheweth himselfe liberall, giving his friend that contentment, to effect towards him what he desireth most.  When the Philosopher Diogenes wanted money, he was wont to say that he redemanded the same of his friends, and not that he demanded it:  And to show how that is practised by effect, I will relate an ancient singular example.  Eudamidas the Corinthiam had two friends:  Charixenus a Sycionian, and Aretheus a Corinthian; being upon his death-bed, and very poore, and his two friends very rich, thus made his last will and testament:  “To Aretheus, I bequeath the keeping of my mother, and to maintaine her when she shall be old:  To Charixenus the marrying of my daughter, and to give her as great a dowry as he may:  and in case one of them shall chance to die before, I appoint the survivor to substitute