A Cloud of Witnesses, A Path of Blood – Hebrews 11:35-38

So have all sorts of death been consecrated to the glory of God in the sufferings of the church. Christ himself, God’s great martyr, the amen and faithful witness, was crucified; John the Baptist, his forerunner, was beheaded; Stephen, his first witness by death, was stoned. Nero first invented torments in the case of religion, which afterwards the devil and the world placed their greatest hopes of prevalency in. But, no instruments of cruelty, no inventions of the devil or the world, no terrible preparations of death, that is, no endeavours of the gates of hell, shall ever prevail against the faith of God’s elect. – John Owen