§ 92. CALVIN'S MARRIAGE AND HOME LIFE. 423
" With reference to my own feelings, if your sons had never come hither at all, I should never have been grieved on account of the death of Claude and Louis. Never, however, shall this most crushing sorrow, which I suffer on account of both, so overcome me, as to reflect with grief upon that day on which they were driven hither by the hand of God to us, rather than led by any settled purpose of their own, when that friendship commenced which has not only continued undiminished to the last, but which, from day to day, was rather increased and confirmed. Whatever, therefore, may have been tlie kind or model of education they were in search of, I rejoice that they lived under the same roof with me. And since it was appointed them to die, I rejoice also that they died under my roof, where they rendered back their souls to God more composedly, and in greater circumstances of quiet, than if they had happened to die in those places where they would have experienced greater annoyance from the importunity of those by whom they ought to have been assisted, than from death itself. On the contrary, it was in the midst of pious exhortations, and while calling upon the name of the Lord, that these sainted spirits fled from the communion of their brethren here to the bosom of Christ. Nor would I desire now to be free from all sorrow at the cost of never having known them. Their memory will ever be sacred to me to the end of my days, and I am persuaded that it will also be sweet and comforting.
"But what advantage, you will say, is it to me to have had a son of so much promise, since he has been torn away from me in the first flower of his youth ■? As if, forsooth, Christ had not merited, by His death, the supreme dominion over the living and the dead ! And if we belong to Him (as we ought), why may He not exercise over us the power of life and of death"? However brief, therefore, either in your opinion or in mine, the life of your son may have been, it ought to satisfy us that he has finished the course which the Lord had marked out for him.
"Moreover, we may not reckon him to have perished in tlie flower of his age, who had grown ripe in the sight of the Lord. For I consider all to have arrived at maturity who are summoned away by death ; unless, perhaps, one would contend with Him, as if He can snatch away any one before his time. This, indeed, holds true of every one ; but in regard to Louis, it is yet more certain on another and more peculiar ground. For he had arrived at that age, when, by true evidences, he could prove himself a member of the body of Christ : having put forth this fruit, he was taken from us and transplanted. Yes, instead of this transient and vanishing shadow of life, he has regained the real immortality of being.
"Nor can you consider yourself to have lost him, whom you will recover in the blessed resurrection in the kingdom of God. For they had both so lived and so died, that I cannot doubt but they are now with the Lord. Let us, therefore, press forward toward this goal which they have reached. There can be no doubt but that Christ will bind together both them and us in the same inseparable society, in that incomparable participation of His own glory. Beware, therefore, that you do not lament your son as lost, whom you acknowledge to be preserved by the Lord, that he may remain yours forever,
424 THE EEFOEMATION IN FRENCH SWITZERLAND.
who, at the pleasure of His own will, lent him to you only for a season. . . ,
" Neither do I insist upon your laying aside all grief. Nor, in the school of Christ, do we learn any such philosophy as requires us to put off that common humanity with which God has endowed us, that, being men, we should be turned into stones.^ These considerations reach only so far as this, that you do set bounds, and, as it were, temper even j'our most reasonable sadness , that, having shed those tears which were due to nature and to fatherly affection, j'ou by no means give way to senseless wailing. Nor do I by any means interfere because I am distrustful of j'our prudence, firmness, or high-mindedness ; but only lest I might here be wanting, and come short in my duty to you.
" Moreover, I have requested Melanchthon and Bucer that they would also add their letters to mine, because I entertained the hope that it would not be unacceptable that they too should afford some evidence of their good-will toward you.
"Adieu, most distinguished sir, and my much-respected in the Lord. May Christ the Lord keep you and your family, and direct you all with His own Spirit, until you may arrive where Louis and Claude have gone before."
1 " Neque hanc philosophiam discimus in schola Christi, ut earn quam nobis indidit humanitatem exuendo, ex hominibus lapides Jiamus." This shows how far Calvin was from heathen stoicism.