"I dare not speak to you, nor have a thought within my own heart of my unspeakable loss, but wholly keep my eye fixed upon your inexpressible and inconceivable gain. You leave but a sinful, mortal wife to be everlastingly married to the Lord of glory. You leave but children, brothers, and sisters to go to the Lord Jesus, your elder brother. You leave friends on earth to go to the enjoyment of saints and angels, and the spirits of just men made perfect in glory. You do but leave earth for heaven and change a prison for a palace.
And if natural affections should begin to arise, I hope that spirit of grace that is within you will quell them, knowing that all things here below are but dung and dross in comparison of those things that are above. I know you keep your eye fixed on the hope of glory, which makes your feet trample on the loss of earth."
- A letter (1651) of Mary Love to her husband Christopher Love the day before he was to be executed. Mary petitioned the English parliament four times. The first asked that he be pardoned, citing friends who said that he would live a peacable life. In the second she asked for banishment instead of death. In the third she asked for his banishment to New England so that he might be used of God in the conversion of the Indians. Lastly she asked that she might trade her life for his own on the scaffold. Each petition was read before parliament and voted down.
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