From Rise of Protestantism in France to Publication of the Institutes - James Aitken Wylie

judges. For them there could be no other sentence
than death, and that death could come in no other
form than the terrible one of burning. Nor had they
long to wait. Three short days and then the
executions began! The scaffolds were distributed
over all the quarters of Paris, and the burnings
followed on successive days, the design being to
spread the terror of heresy by spreading the
executions. The advantage however, in the end,
remained with the Gospel. All Paris was enabled to
see what kind of men the new opinions could
produce. There is no pulpit like the martyr's pile.
The serene joy that lighted up the faces of these
men as they passed along, in their wretched
tumbril, to the place of execution, their heroism as
they stood amid the bitter flames, their meek
forgiveness of injuries, transformed, in instances
not a few, anger into pity, and hate into love, and
pleaded with resistless eloquence in behalf of the
Gospel.
Of this little band, the first to tread the road
from the prison to the stake, and from the stake to
the crown, was Bartholomew Millon. The
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