The true and only way of concord of all the Christian churches the desirableness…

Yea I can dye with much the greater willingness, because (besides my hopes of heaven) I live even on earth when I am dead: I live in all that live, and shall live till the end of all. I am not of the mind of the selfish person, that saith, when I am dead, all the world is dead or at an end to me: But rather, God is my highest object: His Glory and complacency is my End: These shine and are attained more in and by the whole Creation than by me: while these go on, the End is attained which I was made for: And I shall never be separated living or dead from the universal Church ⟨p. 43⟩or universal world: so that when I am dead, my end, my interest, my united fellow-Christians and Creatures will still live. If I loved my friend better than my self, it would be less grief to me to be banished than for him to be banished: And so it would be less grief to me to dye, than for him to dye. And if I loved the Church and the world but half as much more than my self, as my reason is fully convinced there is cause, it would seem to me incomparably a smaller evil to dye my self than that the Church or world should dye. As long as my Garden flourisheth, I can bear the death of the several flowers, whose place will the next spring be succeeded by the like: And as long as my Orchard liveth I can bear the falling of a leaf or an apple, yea of all the leaves and fruit in Autumn, which the next spring will repair and restore in kind, though not those individual▪ What am I that the world should miss me, or that my death should be taken by others or by me, for a matter of any great regard? I can think so of another, and another can think so of me: But unhappy selfishness maketh it hard for every man or any man to think so of himself. Did UNITY more prevail in men, and SELFISHNESS less, it would more rejoice a dying man, that the Power, Wisdom and Goodness of God, will continue to shine forth in the Church and world, and that others shall succeed him in serving God and his Church when he is dead, than it would grieve him that he must dye himself.

Yea more than all this, this Holy UNITY will make all the Joys of Heaven to be partly ours. Even while we are here in pain and sorrows, we are members of the Body, whose Best part is above with Christ; and therefore their joys are by participation