The five Chinese characters of myō, hō, ren, ge, and kyō, the gist of the Lotus Sūtra and the eyes of Buddhas, have never been propagated even by such disciples of the Buddha as Kāśyapa and Ānanda, such great commentators in India as Aśvaghoṣa and Nāgārjuna, or such great teachers as Nan-yüeh, T’ien-t’ai, and Miao-lê in China, and Dengyō of Japan in some 2,220 years after the death of the Buddha. They have only just begun to spread in this world at this very moment in the beginning of the Latter Age of Degeneration with I, Nichiren, heading the van. All those in our group, follow me in the second and third battle lines, performing greater exploits than those of Kāśyapa and Ānanda as well as T’ien-t’ai and Dengyō. What can you do with the punishment of “King Yama,” the lord in the realm of the dead, when you, threatened by the Hōjōs who are mere rulers of a small island kingdom, abandon the Lotus Sūtra and are condemned to fall into hell? Such a person who claims to be a messenger of the Buddha but is scared of a minor persecution such as this is nothing but a coward. Thus I told them.

Shuju Onfurumai Gosho, Reminiscences: from Tatsunokuchi to Minobu, Writings of Nichiren Shōnin, Biography and Disciples, Volume 5, Pages 24-25