“It is, therefore, a matter of vital concern that we rethink our Protestant heritage, gain fresh insight into its significance for our life and times, and unite all the forces of Protestantism in making its significance effective in our world today. This noble heritage is ours. Your forefathers and mine died martyr deaths and braved persecution to maintain this faith. Are you Dutch? Holland ran red with Protestant blood in a persecution whose brutality has never been surpassed. Are you French? The streets of Paris are made sacred with the blood of two thousand Huguenots who died in a massacre on St. Bartholomew’s Day, 1572, for their Protestant faith. Did your ancestors come from Scotland? Patrick Hamilton and George Wishart were burned, John Knox made to serve as a galley slave, and scores like them persecuted in the efforts to establish Protestantism in Scotland. Are you English? Many of your ancestors, like Cranmer, Ridley, and Latimer who were burned in Oxford Market Place, were persecuted for their faith. And so the story goes. Whatever else Protestantism may be, it is made sacred by martyr blood. I submit to you faith for which people have died, which even the Inquisition could not conquer, is worthy of our deeper consideration.” — John H. Leith, “Our Protestant Heritage” (1945) in Charles E. Raynal, ed., Pilgrimage of a Presbyterian: Collected Shorter Writings, John H. Leith (2001), pp. 9-10