SS aAXTER's DYING THOUGHTS. and quick . ommunication. They need not send letters, or write books to one another, nor lift up a voice to make each other hear ; nor is there any unkindness, division, or unsociable selfishness among them, which may cause them to conceal their notices or their joys; but as activity, so unity is greatest where there is most perfection: they will so be many as yet to be one; and their knowledge will be one knowledge, and their love one love, and their joy one joy. Not by so perfect a unity as in God himself, who is one and but one; but suchas is suitable to created imperfec- tion, which participate of.the perfection of the Creator, as the ef- fect doth of the virtue of the cause, and therefore bath some,parti- cipation of his unity. (O foolish soul ! if I shall fear this unity with God, Christ, and all the holy spirits, lest I should lose my present separate individuation,when perfection and union are so near akin.) In a word, I have no cause to think that my celestial advancement will be a diminution of any desirable knowledge, even of things on earth ; but contrarily, that it will be inconceiva- bly increased. (2.) But if indeed I shall knowless of.things below, it will be because that the knowledge of thgm is a part of vanity and vexa- tion, which bath no place in heaven. So much knowledge ofgood and evil in lower matters, as carñe to its by sin, is unworthy of our fond tenaciousness, and fear of losing. it. Surely the sad tidings which we have weekly inour news-books,our lamentable notices of heathen and infidel, kingdoms, of the overspreading prevalency of barbarousness, idolatry, ignorance, and infidelity ; of the rage and success of cruel tyrants ; of the bloodywars of proud, unquiet, worldly men ; of the misery of the oppressed, desolate countries, thedissipated churches, the persecuted, innocent Christians; are no such pleasing things as that we should be afraid to hear of such no more. To know or hear of the poor in famine, the rich in folly, the church distracted, the kingdom discontented, the godly scandal- ous by the effects of their errors, imperfectionl, and divisions ; the wicked outrageous, and waxing worse, the falseness, or miscar-. riages, or sufferings of friends, the fury or success 6f enemies; is this an intelligence which I cannot spare ? What is the daily tidings that I. hear, but of bloodywars, the undone countries, the persecuted churches, the silenced, banished, or imprisoned preachers; of the best removed in judgment from an unworthy world by death, and worse succeeding in their rooms ; of the renewed designs and en- deavors of the church's enemies; 'the implacable rage of the worldly and unquiet clergy, and the new divisions of self-conceited sectaries, add the obloquy and backbitings. of each party against the other I Howoft hear I the sad tidings of this'friend's sickness or death, and that friend's discontent, and of another's fall, and of
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