Letter XX. To an Ecclesiastic. On friendship

My very dear" Brother, — The question you ask me is this: Will not your heart love mine truly, and always, and in all occurrences? and my answer is: O my dearest brother! It is a maxim of three great lovers, all three saints, all three doctors of the church, all three great friends, all three great masters of moral theology, St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, St. Augustine: Amicitia guce desinere potuit nunquam vera fuit* There, my dear brother, there is the sacred oracle which announces to you the invariable law of the eternity of our friendship, since it is holy and not feigned (sainte et non feinte), founded on verity and not on vanity, on the communication of spiritual goods and not on the interest or commerce of temporal goods. To love truly and to cease loving are two incompatible things.

The friendships of the children of the world are of the nature of the world; the world passes, and all its friendships pass; but ours is of God, in God, and for God: Thou art always the self-same, and thy years shall not fail.j- The world passeth away, and the concupiscence thereof: Christ passeth not away, nor his dilection. Infallible conclusion.

• Friendship which could end was never true, f Ps. ci. 28.

Your dear sister writes ever to me with so much outpouring of her dear love that truly she deprives me of the power of thanking her properly. I say the same of you, begging you to thank one another for the satisfaction you give me.

For the rest, I send then the portrait of this terrestrial man, so entirely am I without the power to refuse anything to your desire.

I am told that I have never been well painted, and I think it matters little. Man passeth as an image; yea, and he is disquieted in vain* I have borrowed it to give to you, for I have none of my own. Alas! if that of my Creator were in its lustre in my soul, with what good will would you look upon it! O Jesu I tuo lumine, tuo redemptos sanguine sana, refove, perfice, tibi conformes effice. Amen.