SECT. VIII.] THE HAPPINESS OF SEPARATE SPIRITS. 457 Now can we suppose two such souls to have been so happily intimate on earth, and may we not imagine they found' each other among the brighter spirits on high ? May we not indulge-ourselves to believe, that our late honoured friend hath been congratulated upon his arrival by that holy man that assisted to direct and lead him thi- ther? Nor is it improbable that he has found other happy souls there, who were numbered among his pious ac- quaintance on earth. Shall I mention that excellent man Sir Tuovtns ABNFY, who was his late forerunner to hea- ven, and had not finished two months there before Sir J01IN HARTOPP's arrival ? Happy spirits ! May I con- gratulate your meeting in the celestial regions ? But the world and the churches mourn your absence ; and the Protestant Dissenters lament the loss of twoof their fairest ornaments and honours. And is there not the same reason to believe, that our departed friend bath by this time renewed his sacred en- dearments'with those kindred spirits, that were once re- lated to him in some of the nearest bonds of flesh and blood ? There they rejoice together in unknown satisfac- tion, they wait and long for the arrival of those whom. they left behind, and for whose immortal welfare they had a solicitous concern in the state of their mortality. This thought opens my way to address the posterity, the kindred, and the friends of the deceased, in the fifth remark. SECTION VIII. An Address to thefriends and relatives of the deceased. REMARK V. If the perfection of blessed spirits above consists in a glorious increase of those virtues and graces which were begun below, let us see to it then, that those graces and those virtues are begun in us here, or they will never be perfected in us hereafter. If our spirits have nothing of that divine righteousness wrought in them on earth, we can never be admitted into the com- pany of the spirits of the righteous made perfect in hea- ven. It is an old saying among divines, but it is a most ra- tional and a certain truth, that grace is glory begun, and
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