The Bible has ever been the bulwark of tyranny. When the oppressed millions of France were endeavoring to throw off their yoke--when the Washingtons, the Franklins, the Paines, and the Jeffersons were contending for American liberty--craven priests stood up in the pulpit, opened this book, and gravely read: "The powers that be are ordained of God; they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." In the American Revolution every Tory was a Christian, and nearly every orthodox Christian was a Tory. Writing in 1777, John Wesley says: "I have just received two letters from New York.... They inform me that all the Methodists there were firm for the government, and on that account persecuted by the rebels" (Wesley's Miscellaneous Works, Vol. III., page 410). Referring to our Revolutionary fathers, Robert Dale Owen says: "I know not what the private opinions of those sturdy patriots were, who, in the old Philadelphia State House, appended their signatures to the immortal document. But this I do know, that when they did so, it was in defiance of the Bible; it was in direct violation of the law of the New Testament. "If a Being who cannot lie penned the Bible, then George Washington and every soldier who drew sword in the Republic's armies for liberty expiate, at this moment, in hell-fire, the punishment of their ungodly strife! There, too, John Hancock and every patriot whose name stands to America's Title Deed, have taken their places with the devil and his angels! All resisted the power; all, unless God lie, have received to themselves damnation" (Bacheler-Owen Debate, Vol. II., page 230). From the first century to the twentieth--from Paul to Leo--these Bible teachings have dominated the Christian world. Of the early Christian Fathers, Lecky writes: "The teaching of the early Fathers on the subject is perfectly unanimous and unequivocal. Without a single exception, all who touched upon the subject pronounced active resistance to the established authorities to be under all circumstances sinful" (Rationalism in Europe, Vol. II., page 136). Jeremy Taylor, one of the greatest of modern divines, speaking not for himself alone, but for all Christians, says: "The matter of Scripture being so plain that it needs no interpretation, the practice and doctrine of the church, which is usually the best commentary, is now but of little use in a case so plain; yet this also is as plain in itself, and without any variety, dissent, or interruption universally agreed upon, universally practiced and taught, that, let the powers set over us be what they will, we must suffer it and never right ourselves" (Ductor Dubitantium, Book III., chapter iii). This has been the chief cause of Christian triumph and Christian supremacy. It has secured for the church the adherence and support of every tyrant in Christendom. Thomas Jefferson truly says: