For we unjustly defraud God of his right, unless each of us lives and dies in dependence on his sovereign pleasure.
John Calvin
CCCCXXI.—TO RICHARD VAUVILLE1)To Richard Vauville, pastor of the French Church of Frankfort.
A letter printed with an incorrect date, 1556. Vauville, falling a victim in this town to the plague which had carried off his wife, died in the latter months of the preceding year, as is testified by a letter of Calvin to the Church of Frankfort of the 24th December 1555: “As to the death of our good brother, Master Richard Vauville, it was very sorrowful news for us. For God had provided for you in him a good and faithful pastor, which is a thing not always easily to be found.” The letter of consolation addressed to Vauville on the occasion of his wife’s death, should be placed as we think in November 1555.
Christian consolations on the occasion of his wife’s death.
(November, 1555.)
How deep a wound the death of your wife must have inflicted on your heart, I judge from my own feelings. For I recollect how difficult it was for me seven years ago to get over a similar sorrow. But as you know perfectly well, what are the suitable remedies for alleviating an excessive sorrow, I have nothing else to do than to remind you to summon them to your aid. Among other things, this is no mean source of consolation, which nevertheless the flesh seizes upon to aggravate our sorrow, that you lived with a wife of such a disposition, that you will willingly renew your fellowship with her when you shall be called out of this world. Then an example of dying piously was offered to you by the companion of your life. If it were my task to exhort a private person, I should order him to weigh in his own mind, what he owes to his Creator. For we unjustly defraud God of his right, unless each of us lives and dies in dependence on his sovereign pleasure. But it is your duty to reflect what part you sustain in the church of God. As, however, our principal motive of consolation consists in this, that by the admirable providence of God, the things which we consider adverse, contribute to our salvation, and that we are separated in the world only that we may be once more reunited in his celestial kingdom, in this you will from your piety acquiesce. As I hear that the heat of contentions in your church is a little abated, you will do your endeavour that no secret grudges remain in people’s minds. That cannot be accomplished all at once, I know. Therefore by degrees you will study to mollify the tempers which have been exasperated, till offences be completely softened down. Farewell, my most worthy and dearest brother. May the Lord alleviate the sorrow of your widowhood, by the grace of his Spirit, and bless all your labours.
[Calvin’s Lat. Corresp. Opera, tom. ix. p. 112.]
Bonnet, J. (2009). Letters of John Calvin (Vol. 3, pp. 236–237). Bellingham, WA: Logos Bible Software.
References
| ↑1 | To Richard Vauville, pastor of the French Church of Frankfort. A letter printed with an incorrect date, 1556. Vauville, falling a victim in this town to the plague which had carried off his wife, died in the latter months of the preceding year, as is testified by a letter of Calvin to the Church of Frankfort of the 24th December 1555: “As to the death of our good brother, Master Richard Vauville, it was very sorrowful news for us. For God had provided for you in him a good and faithful pastor, which is a thing not always easily to be found.” The letter of consolation addressed to Vauville on the occasion of his wife’s death, should be placed as we think in November 1555. |
|---|