210 BAXTER'S DYING THOUGHTS. Christ are the same, still, that they were, and may be called by the saine names. Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are the same in heaven ; and Lazarus was Lazarus in Abraham's bosom. When we lay by flesh, and are unclothed, we put not off our personali- ties. Every one shall receive his own reward according to what . he bath done in the body, when every one must give account of his own works and talents. Why, then, may not I, with distinct conceptions and joyful de- sires, look after the souls of my departed friends, that are now in the celestial kingdom ? Though malignity bath spotted me for naming some, few in my ` Saints' Rest, being such as the despis- ers hated, yet I forbear not, on such accounts, to solace myself by naming more, but because they are more than it is fit to num- ber. In all places where I have lived, how many excellent souls (though here they were not perfect) are gone to Christ! How sweet is the remembrance of the communion which I had with many of them in Shrewsbury, and other parts of Shropshire ; of' many at Dudley, and the adjoining parts ; of multitudes at Kid- derminster, Besvdley, and other parts of Worcestershire ; of abun- dance at Coventry, and other parts of Warwickshire ; and of many where I have sojourned in other parts of the land ; and, above all, in London, and the adjoining,parts ! As Mr. Howe bath elegantly expressed it, in his excellent character of my excellent and dear friend,Mr. Richard Eairclough, what a multitudeof blessed saints will arise, at the last day, out of London ! And this earth is, as it were, hallowed with the dust and relics of so many blessed souls. But it is heaven that is spangled with these spiritual stars; the place honored with them, and they with it, and all 'by Christ. We are like infants, or lambs, orother young ones, that cry but for their dams, if they be out of sight ; though theyare ever so near, if they see them not, they cry as if they were not, or .had forsaken them. As Christ told his disciples, that it was needful for them that he departed from them ; and yet their hearts, for this, were sorrowful, till the Holy Ghost came upon them, as better than Christ's flesh- ly presence, to prepare them joyfully to follow him ; so we think of our friends as almost lost to us by separation, till the heaven- ly Spirit tell us where they are, and, prepare us to desire to be with them. 8. Elias bath a body now in heaven, and so bath Enoch ; but can we think that only two or three that are there with Christ do so much differ from all the rest, as.to have bodies when the rest have none? Is there such a dissimilitude of saints in heaven? What are two or three in such a society ? Doubtless, their bodies are not corruptible flesh and blood, but such spiritual bodies as all saints shall have at the resurrection. But are they in heaven such
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