evils shall depart from thee." (Eccl. vii. 2.) Fly, separate from wicked companions, and you shall cease to commit sin. ” Neither let the way of evil men please thee. Flee from it: pass not by it: go aside and forsake it." (Prov. iv. 14, 15.) Avoid the ways in which these vicious friends walk, that you may not even meet them. ” Forsake not an old friend; for the new will not be like to him." (Eccl. ix. 14.) Do not leave your first friend, who loved you before you came into the world. ” I have loved thee with an everlasting love." (Jer. xxxi. 3.) Your new friends do not love you; they hate you more than your greatest enemy: they seek not your welfare, as God, does, but their own pleasures, and the satisfaction of having companions of their wickedness and perdition. You will, perhaps, say: I feel a repugnance to separate from such a friend, who has been solicitous for my welfare; to break off from him would appear to be an act of ingratitude. What welfare? What ingratitude? God alone wishes your welfare, because he desires your eternal salvation. Your friend wishes your eternal ruin; he wishes you to follow him, but cares not if you be damned. It is not ingratitude to abandon a friend who leads you to hell; but it is ingratitude to forsake God, who has created you, who has died for you on the cross, and who desires your salvation.
9. Fly then from the conversation of these wicked friends. ” Hedge in thy ears with thorns, hear not a wicked tongue." (Eccl. xxviii. 28.) Beware of listening to the language of such friends; their words may bring you to perdition. And when you hear them speak improperly arm yourself with thorns, and reprove them, not only for the purpose of rebuking, but also of converting them. ” Ut non solum," says St. Augustine, ” repellantur sed etiam compungantur." Listen to a frightful example, and learn the evil which a wicked friend does. Father Sabatino relates in his "Evangelical Light ” that two friends of that kind were one day together. One of them, to please the other, committed a sin; but after they had separated he died suddenly. The other, who knew nothing of his death, saw, in his sleep, his friend, and, according to his custom, ran to embrace him. But the deceased appeared to be surrounded
