the Rev. W. Turner , Jun. , MA., Lives of the eminent Unitarians

‘ [64] duties of secret piety and devotion, with reverence and great seriousness; when we have seen them faithful in all their relative capacities, as therein serving the Lord, as well as man; when they have been eminently mortified to this vain world, to all the gaiety and bravery, the interests, divertisements and pleasures of this life, and that in years and circumstances very capable of such temptations, and this because they rather chose the better part which shall never be taken away; when we have beheld their submissive patience and christian resignation to God, under misery; and after all great humility in an abasing sense of their unworthiness and need of mercy; but yet supporting their faith with honourable thoughts of the divine goodness, and a sense of their own sincerity, so as with hope and strong desires to breathe out their departing souls into their Redeemer's hands, welcoming his approaches with “Come, Lord Jesus, come quickly;” —when we can thus describe our friends, (and I know well whom I could thus imperfectly describe,) why should we not conclude they are gone to the Father? And why should we not rejoice in all the comforts of that consideration? How unreasonable is our immoderate sorrow, when all the rest of their friends rejoice! For, as themselves rejoice to go to the Father, so the blessed God, their Father, has welcomed them with joy to their everlasting home; Jesus Christ has presented them as his crown and joy, without spot or blemish; holy angels and spirits congratulate their arrival to their society, and cannot be supposed to rejoice less at the consummation of their victorious warfare that at its beginning in their conversion; ’