Persecution and the Reverse Effect

It has become a settled principle that nothing which is good and true can be destroyed by persecution, but that the effect ultimately is to establish more firmly, and to spread more widely, that which it was designed to overthrow. It has long since passed into a proverb that "the blood of the martyrs is the seed of the church."

—Albert Barnes (December 1, 1798 – December 24, 1870, American theologian, preacher, abolitionist, and author).