The Love Letters, #2

“More Dear to Me than Ever,

It adds to my rejoicing that I have so good and gracious a wife to part with for the Lord Jesus. In your grief, I have been grieved; but in your joy I have been comforted. Surely, nature could never help you to bear so heavy a stroke with so much silence and submission to the hand of God! Oh, dearest, every line which you write gladdens my heart. I dare not think that there is such a creature as Mary Love in the world. For Kit and Mall [the two living children], I can think of them without trouble, leaving them to so good a God and so good a mother.

Be comforted concerning your husband, who may more honor God in his death than in his life. The will of the Lord be done; he is fully satisfied with the hand of God. Though there is but little between him and death, he knows that there is but little between him and heaven, and that ravishes his heart.”


- Christopher Love, in a letter (1651) to his wife Mary Love while in prison in a tower awaiting execution. The letter ends, “The very things I thought to have written you, you have written to me. I have had more comfort from your gracious letters than from all the counsel I have had from anyone else in the world. Well be assured that we shall meet in heaven.”

The Love Letters

"Be not troubled to think what shall become of you and yours after my death, for be assured that my God, and the God of the widows and fatherless, will not forsake you, but will wonderfully provide for those and be comforted in this, that though men take your husband from you, they cannot take your God from you; and so do not think that you have lost your husband, but only parted with him for a while, and in the meantime your Savior will be a husband unto you and a father unto your children."


- Christopher Love (1618-1651). Love's execution was delayed for a month from July 15th to August 15th, and then for another week after that. On August 21st, the night before his death, he was able to see his wife. These were some his last words to her before they prayed together and she departed.