[TESTAMENT,] WRITTEN TO JANNEKEN MY OWN DEAREST DAUGHTER, WHILE I WAS (UNWORTHILY) CONFINED FOR THE LORD’S SAKE, IN PRISON, AT ANTWERP, A. D. 1573.

The true love of God and wisdom of the Father strengthen you in virtue, my dearest child; the Lord of heaven and earth, the God of Abraham, the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob, the Lord in Israel, keep you in his virtue, and strengthen and confirm your understanding in his truth. My dear little child, I commend you to the almighty, great and terrible God, who only is wise, that he will keep you, and let you grow up in his fear, or that he will take you home in your youth, this is my heart’s request of the Lord: you who are yet so young, and whom I must leave here in this wicked, evil, perverse world.

Since, then, the Lord has so ordered and foreordained it, that I must leave you here, and you are here deprived of father and mother, I will commend you to the Lord; let him do with you according to his holy will. He will govern you, and be a Father to you, so that you shall have no lack here, if you only fear God; for he will be the Father of the orphans and the Protector of the widows.

Hence, my dear lamb, I who am imprisoned and bound here for the Lord’s sake, can help you in no other way; I had to leave your father for the Lord’s sake, and could keep him only a short time. We were permitted to live together only half a year, after which we were apprehended, because we sought the salvation of our souls. They took him from me, not knowing my condition, and I had to remain in imprisonment, and see him go before me; and it was a great grief to him, that I had to remain here in prison. And now that I have abided the time, and borne you under my heart with great sorrow for nine months, and given birth to you here in prison, in great pain, they have taken you from me. Here I lie, expecting death every morning, and shall now soon follow your dear father. And I, your dear mother, write you, my dearest child, something for a remembrance, that you will thereby remember your dear father and your dear mother.

Since I am now delivered up to death, and must leave you here alone, I must through these lines cause you to remember, that when you have attained your understanding, you endeavor to fear God, and see and examine why and for whose name we both died; and be not ashamed to confess us before the world, for you must know that it is not for the sake of any evil. Hence be not ashamed of us; it is the way which the prophets and the apostles went, and the narrow way which leads into eternal life, for there shall no other way be found by which to be saved.

Hence, my young lamb, for whose sake I still have, and have had, great sorrow, seek, when you have attained your understanding, this narrow way, though there is sometimes much danger in it according to the flesh, as we may see and read, if we diligently examine and read the Scriptures, that much is said concerning the cross of Christ. And there are many in this world who are enemies of the cross, who seek to be free from it among the world, and to escape it. But, my dear child, if we would with Christ seek and inherit salvation, we must also help bear his cross; and this is the cross which he would have us bear: to follow his footsteps, and to help bear his reproach; for Christ himself says: Ye shall be persecuted, killed, and dispersed for my name’s sake. Yea, he himself went before us in this way of reproach, and left us an example, that we should follow his steps; for, for his sake all must be forsaken, father, mother, sister, brother, husband, child, yea, one’s own life.

I must now also forsake all this for the Lord’s sake, which the world is not worthy to suffer; for if we had continued in the world, we would have had no trouble. For when we were one with the world and practiced idolatry, and loved all manner of unrighteousness, we could live at peace with the world; but when we desired to fear God, and to shun such improper ways, well knowing that this could not please God, wherefore we sought to shun all this, and turned from idolatry to the worship of the living God, and sought here in quietness and gentleness to practice our faith, then they did not leave us in peace; then our blood was sought; then we had to be a prey to every one, and become a 936 spectacle to all the world. They seek here to murder and to burn us; we are placed at posts and stakes, and our flesh is given as food to the worms.