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THE HAPPINESS
OF
SEPARATE
SPIRITS.
[Bise.
Ir.
there
are
mansions
of joy
prepared
for
you
also, and
we
wait your
happy arrival."
REMARK
IV.
Are the
spirits
of
just
men
in
heaven
made perfect
in
the
same
excellencies
and privileges
which they
possessed
on
earth
?
Then
if our
curiosity,
or
our
love, has
a
mind
to
know what
are
the circumstances
of
our pious friends
departed,
or
how they
are
employed
above,
let
us
review
what
they were here
below,
and
how
they
employed themselves when they were with
us;
for,
as
I told
you,
in
this
life,
we
are
trained up
for
the
life
of
glory
:
We
shall
then
be
advanced
to
a
glorious
and transcendent degree of
the same
graces
;
and there
will be something
in
the future
state
of rewards
an-
swerable and correspondent
to
the
present state of
labour
and
trial.
This thought
necessarily
calls
our meditations back
-
ward
a
little,
to
take
a
short survey
of
some
peculiar cha-
racters
of
our
excellent
friend
departed, that
we may
learn
to
rejoice
in
the present perfection of
his
graces
and
glories.
SECTION
VII.
The
character
of
the deceased.
When
I
name
Sir
John
Hartopp,
all
that knew
him
will
agree that
I
name
a
gentleman, a
scholar, and
a
Christian:
and neither
of
these characters,
in
the best
and
most valuable
sense
of
them,
could forsake
him
at
his
entrance into heaven.
He
shone with
eminence among persons of
birth
and
title
*
on
earth
;
while his
obliging
deportment
and
affa-
ble
temper
rendered
him
easy
of
access
to all
his
infe-
riors,
and made him the delight of
all his friends.
Though
he
knew what
was due to
his
quality
in
this
world,
yet he affected none
of the grandeurs
of
life,
but
daily
practised condescension and
love,
and secured
the
respect of
all,
without
assuming
a
superior air.
Then
surely he
carried this
temper
with him
to the
upper
world, where gentleness and goodness reign
in
the
highest
perfection
;
and
doubtless he practises now
all the
* His
grandfather,
Sir
Edward Hartopp,
was
created
a
baronet by
King
James
I.
1619,
which
was
but
a few
years
after the
first
institution of
that
order.