This style of controversy was typical of the time. Tories drew from the French Revolution warnings against the heedless march of democracy. Reformers based arguments on the "glorious revolution of 1688." A bill for the secularization of King's College was denounced by Bishop Strachan, the stalwart leader of the Anglicans, in language of extraordinary vehemence. The bill would hold up the Christian religion to the contempt of wicked men, and overturn the social order by unsettling property. Placing all forms of error on an equality with truth, the bill represented a principle "atheistical and monstrous, destructive of all that was pure and holy in morals and religion." To find parallels for this madness, the bishop referred to the French Revolution, when the Christian faith was abjured, and the Goddess of Reason set up for worship; to pagan Rome, which, to please the natives she had conquered, "condescended to associate their impure idolatries with her own." These writings are quoted not merely as illustrations of extravagance of language. The language was the natural outcome of an extraordinary situation. The bishop was not a voice crying in the wilderness; he was a power in politics as well as in the Church, and had, as executive councillor, taken an important part in the government of the country. He was not making extravagant pretensions, but defending a position actually held by his Church, a position which fell little short of absolute domination. Religious equality was to be established, a great endowment of land converted from sectarian to public purposes, and a non-sectarian system of education created. In this work Brown played a leading part, but before it could be undertaken it was necessary to vindicate the right of the people to self-government.