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.”