He had to do his duty--to obey the orders of a Power higher than that of kings; and he did it at all hazards.
Afterwards, when hard pressed by his enemies at Augsburg, Luther said that "if he had five hundred heads, he would lose them all rather than recant his article concerning faith." Like all courageous men, his strength only seemed to grow in proportion to the difficulties he had to encounter and overcome.

"There is no man in Germany," said Hutten, "who more utterly despises death than does Luther." And to his moral courage, perhaps more than to that of any other single man, do we owe the liberation of modern thought, and the vindication of the great rights of the human understanding.
The honourable and brave man does not fear death compared with ignominy.
It is said of the Royalist Earl of Strafford that, as he walked to the scaffold on Tower Hill, his step and manner were those of a general marching at the head of an army to secure victory, rather than of a condemned man to undergo sentence of death.

So the Commonwealth's man, Sir John Eliot, went alike bravely to his death on the same spot, saying: "Ten thousand deaths rather than defile my conscience, the chastity and purity of which I value beyond all this world." Eliot's greatest tribulation was on account of his wife, whom he had to leave behind.

When he saw her looking down upon him from the Tower window, he stood up in the cart, waved his hat, and cried: "To heaven, my love!--to heaven!--and leave you in the storm!" As he went on his way, one in the crowd called out, "That is the most glorious seat you ever sat on;" to which he replied: "It is so, indeed!" and rejoiced exceedingly.

[145] Although success is the guerdon for which all men toil, they have nevertheless often to labour on perseveringly, without any glimmer of success in sight.