The blood of the martyrs

These things which I set before you are not those which I have meditated with myself and my shady nook. But those which the invincible martyrs of God realized amid gibbets and flames and ravenous beasts. Had not their courage been not sweated, they would in an instant have been perfidiously abjured the eternal truth which they intrepidly sealed with their blood. They did not set us an example of constancy in asserting the truth, that we should now dessert it when handed down to us so signed and sealed, but they taught us the art by which, trusting in the Divine protection we stand invincible by all powers of death, hell, the world, and Satan. [John Calvin]