Concerning company, I advise,—
1. That thou never cast thyself into wicked company, or press amongst the profane, especially from choice, voluntarily and delightfully; and abide no longer with them at any time, upon any occasion, than thou hast found warrant and a calling thereunto. It is uncomely, and incompatible with good conscience, and is not for the honour or comfort of God's children, to keep company, or familiarly converse, with graceless men.
In which point, to prevent misconceptions and mistakings, consider there is a double fellowship: 1. Common, cold, and more general: in trading, bargaining, buying, selling, saluting, eating and drinking together, and in other passages of humanity and intercourse of civil society, to which charity, nature, necessity, or the exigencies of our general or particular calling, do warrantably lead us. 2. Special, dear, intimate: in consultations and counsels about matters of special secrecy, greatest weight, and highest consequence; in spiritual refreshments, religious conferences, prayer, marriage, all manner of nearest engagements; in a free, unreserved communication of their souls, mutual exchange of the thoughts of their hearts, faithful revelations of the spiritual state of their consciences one to another, and in such like blissful pangs and passages of Christian love and ardent sanctified affection.
The former of these the Christian must of necessity entertain and exercise sometimes with the men of this world, except he will go out of the world, 1 Cor 5:10. But the second fellowship is peculiar to the saints. The Christian is bound by the book of God, by the law of heaven, by his allegiance to his Lord and Sovereign, and by the common charter of God's children, from conversing with delightful intimacy, and from the exchange and exercise of those special passages of dearest acquaintance, with profane men, children of darkness, and enemies of God. For these, and the like reasons, he thereby incurs a double hazard: the one, of infection with sin; the other, of infliction of punishment.
"He that toucheth pitch," saith the wise man, "shall be defiled therewith; and he that hath fellowship with a proud man, shall be like unto him." "Can a man take fire in his bosom, and his clothes not be burned? Can one go upon hot coals, and his feet not be burned?" Prov 6:27-28. Neither can any familiarly and intimately converse with a profane man but he shall be corrupted. [Robert Bolton]
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