He commanded that not friends, but the infirm and such like should be called to the meal. But if a lame man or any one of them be a friend, without doubt such a one is by no means to be invited for friendship's sake: whence these commands seem, as it were, to contradict one another. For if not friends, but the lame and the blind are to be invited, and it should happen that these very ones are also friends, we ought by no means to invite them. But by 'friends,' I think, we ought in this passage to understand those whom we love out of earthly regard for this world, not out of an eye to divine contemplation. These, therefore, are the friends to be forsaken. In short, for that reason he set forth the examples of the weak, whom we can desire for the sake of no necessity of business, but only for the fruit of eternal recompense.