Jan Van Ackeren, A. D. 1573.

Further, my very dear and beloved sister, I inform you, that at the visit my heart was greatly rejoiced by you, because I saw your great joy and gladness in the Lord, your complete self-renunciation, and the resignation of your heart and mind, in the Lord, for which we cannot thank and praise the Lord enough, that he has given you such a treasure in earthen vessels, that you do not want to forsake the Lord, for neither life nor death, nor for any torment which the tyrants might inflict upon you my very dear and beloved sister in the Lord. The Lord, the God of all grace, strengthen and confirm you unto the end, and fulfill all the good pleasure of his goodness in you, and the work of faith with power, that the name of our dear Lord Jesus Christ maybe glorified in you, and that you may fight the good fight of faith; and lay hold on eternal life, whereunto we are called, if we hold the beginning of the Christian life steadfast unto the end. 2 Thess. 1:11,12; 1 Tim. 6:12; Heb, 3:14. For, dear sister in the Lord, if we properly consider the life of Christ, we find nothing but tribulation, suffering and distress. He who was the Lord of lords, for our sakes left his Father’s kingdom; he came into the world, to call our guilt upon him, and paid the debt with his bitter suffering and death on the tree of the cross, leaving us in all things an example, as the apostle says, that we should follow his steps, who did no sin, neither was guile found in his mouth: who when he was reviled, reviled not again; when he suffered he threatened not; but committed himself to him that judgeth righteously: who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sins, should live unto righteousness; by whose stripes ye were healed. For ye were as sheep going astray; but are now returned unto the Shepherd and Bishop of your souls, and in another place the apostle says: Consider him that endured such contradiction of sinners against himself, lest ye be wearied and faint in your minds. Heb. 12:3. And thus also the prophet utters his complaint for him saying: I am a worm, and no man; a reproach of men, and despised of the people. All they that see me laugh me to scorn: they shoot out the lip, they shake the head. Ps. 22:6,7. In still another place Isaiah says. He hath no form nor comeliness; and when we see him, there is no beauty that we should desire him. He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid, as it were, our faces from him.... He was oppressed and he was afflicted, yet he opened not his mouth: he is brought as a lamb to the slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so he opened not his mouth. Is. 53:2,3,7. Besides this, my much beloved sister in the Lord, consider Christ’s entire life how he begun, lived, and ended it; you will find nothing but suffering, humiliation, misery and contempt, which he suffered for our sakes in humility, so that the apostle says of the Lord, that in the days of his flesh he offered up prayers and supplications with strong crying and tears unto God who was able to save him from death, and was heard because he honored God. Heb. 5:7. Hence, my dear sister in the Lord, this beginning of the Christian life must abide with us unto the end, as said before, and we shall then also be partakers of him, and with all God’s children inherit his kingdom through grace, for which reason he went hence to prepare us a place there, even as he says: I go to your and my Father, to prepare a place for you; and if I go, I will come again, and receive you unto myself; that where I am, there ye maybe also, John 20:17; 14:3. Therefore, my dear sister in the Lord, though our God does now hide his face from us for a little while, yet will he gather us again with everlasting kindness, as the prophet says; I will lead you into mine house, and give you a place within my walls, and a name better than of sons and of daughters; yea, I will give you an everlasting name, that shall not be cut off. Yea, he will lay our stones with fair colors, and lay our foundations with sapphires, and will make our windows of crystal and our gates of carbuncles. Is. 54:7,8; 56:5; 54:11,12. Yea, there is a city built, says John, of pure gold, where, my very dear sister in the Lord, you shall see the King in his beauty, whose head is as the finest gold, and his locks are curled and black as a raven; his eyes are as the eyes of doves; his cheeks are as growing beds of spices of the apothecary; his hands are as gold rings set with turquoises, his body is as pure ivory. His legs are as pillars of marble set upon sockets of gold; his mouth is sweet, and his word is lovely. Rev. 21:18; Cant. 5:11–16. In short, we shall find more there, than it is possible to tell us or to describe.