The chronicles contain the lists of these obscure martyrs; but their names, hardly pronounced in their life-time, sound barbarously in our ears, and will never ring through the trumpet of fame.

Yet they were men who dared and suffered as much as men can dare and suffer in this world, and for the noblest cause which can inspire humanity.

Fanatics they certainly were not, if fanaticism consists in show, without corresponding substance.

For them all was terrible reality.

The Emperor and his edicts were realities, the axe, the stake were realities, and the heroism with which men took each other by the hand and walked into the flames, or with which women sang a song of triumph while the grave-digger was shovelling the earth upon their living faces, was a reality also.
Thus, the people of the Netherlands were already pervaded, throughout the whole extent of the country, with the expanding spirit of religious reformation.