_Direct._ XX. When you see divisions among believers, and hear one for this party, and another for that, and hear them bitterly censuring each other, look up then to the saints with Christ, and think what perfect love, and peace, and concord is among them. Consider how unlike our factions and schisms are to their fervent love and unity; and how unlike our jarring strifes and quarrels are to their harmonious praise of God. Remember in what work it is that they are so happily united, even love and praise incessant to Jehovah: and then think, whether it would not unite the saints on earth, to lay by their contendings for the pre-eminence in knowledge, (covered with the gilded name of zeal for the truth of God,) and to employ themselves in love and praise, and to show their emulation here, in striving who shall love God and each other with the more pure heart and fervent love, 1 Pet. i. 22, and who shall praise him with the most heavenly alacrity and delight. Consider whether this work of blessed souls be not like to be more desirable and excellent, than the work of self-conceited, wrangling sophisters. And whether there be any danger of falling into sects and factions, or falling out by emulations or contentions, while we make this work of love and praise the matter of our religious converse. And consider whether almost all the schisms that ever vexed the church of God, did not arise, either by the pastors striving "who should be the greatest," Luke xxii. 24, 26, or by the rising up of some sciolist or gnostic, proudly pretending to know more than others, and to vindicate or bring to light some excellent truth which others know not, or oppose. And when you see the hot contendings of each party, about their pretended orthodoxness or wisdom, (which James iii. is purposely written against,) remember how the concord of those blessed souls doth shame this work, and should make it odious to the heirs of heaven.
_Direct._ XXI. When you are afraid of death, or would find more willingness to die, look up to the blessed souls with Christ, and think that you are but to pass that way, which all those souls have gone before you; and to go from a world of enmity and vanity, to the company of all those blessed spirits. And is not their blessed state more desirable than such a vain, vexatious life as this? There is no malice, nor slandering, nor cruel persecuting; no uncharitable censures, contentions, or divisions; no ignorance, nor unbelief, nor strangeness unto God; nothing but holy, amiable, and delightful. Join yourselves daily to that celestial society: suppose yourselves spectators of their order, purity, and glory, and auditors of their harmonious praises of Jehovah. Live by faith in a daily familiarity with them: say not that you want company or are alone, when you may walk in the streets of the heavenly Jerusalem, and there converse with the prophets and apostles, and all the glorious hosts of heaven. Converse thus with them in your life, and it will overcome the fear of death, and make you long to be there with them: like one that stands by the river side, and seeth his friends on the further side, in a place of pleasure, while his enemies are pursuing him at his back, how gladly would he be over with them! And it will imbolden him to venture on the passage, which all they have safely passed before him. Thus death will be to us as the Red sea, to pass us safe to the land of promise, while our pursuers are there overthrown and perish. We should not be so strange to the world above, if we thus by faith conversed with the blessed ones.
_Direct._ XXII. When you are over-much troubled for the death of your godly friends, look up to that world of blessed souls, to which they are translated, and think whether it be not better for them to be there than here; and whether you are not bound by the law of love, to rejoice with them that are thus exalted. Had we but a sight of the world that they are in, and the company that they are gone to, we should be less displeased with the will of God, in disposing of his own into so glorious a state.