Note 318 — CCLXXII.—To Richard Le Fevre.[318]

Richard Le Fèvre, a native of Rouen, one of the martyrs of the Reformed Church of Lyons. Seized in that town in 1551, and condemned to death, he appealed thence to the Parliament of Paris, and was delivered in transitu by some unknown friends. Surprised, two years afterwards, at Grenoble, he was brought back to the dungeons of Lyons, saw his first sentence confirmed by the Parliament of Paris, and went cheerfully to the stake the 7th July 1551. He wrote on the 3d of May to Calvin,—"The present is to let you know, that I hope to go to keep Whitsuntide in the kingdom of heaven, and to be present at the marriage of the Son of God, ... if I am not sooner called away by this good Lord and Master, whose voice i am ready to obey, when he shall say, Come, ye blessed of my Father, possess the kingdom which has been prepared for you before the foundation of the world."—(The original autograph letter, Library of Geneva, Vol. 109.) During his first captivity at Lyons, Richard Le Fèvre had consulted Calvin on some points of doctrine, and had received pious exhortations from him regarding them.