When the church in her present state was established, the world opposed her in the name of the liberty or independence of the temporal order, which implies as its basis the independence of the creature of the creator, and therefore resting on the same satanic promise, "Ye shall be as gods, knowing good and evil." When our Lord was brought before Pontius Pilate, and Pilate was about to dismiss the charges against him and to let him go, the Jews changed his purpose by telling him, "If you let this man go, you are no friend to Caesar." {7} The heathen persecutions of the Christians were principally on the ground that they were disloyal to the empire, inasmuch as they rejected its worship, and asserted the immediate divine authority of their religion and its independence of the state or civil society, holding firmly always and everywhere the maxim, "We must obey God rather than men." All down through the barbarous ages that followed the downfall of the Roman empire of the West, through the feudal ages, and down even to our own times, the state has claimed supreme authority over the church in regard to her temporal goods and her government, and has constantly sought to subject her to the civil authority, which in principle is the same with subjecting God to man. The world represented by Caesar has constantly struggled to subvert the independence of religion, and to exalt the human above the divine. This is the meaning of the mediaeval contests between the pope and the emperor, as we have heretofore shown. There is not at this day, unless Belgium be an exception, a single state in Europe where the temporal power leaves religion free and independent, or where the church has not to struggle against the government to maintain the independence of the divine order she represents. Fidelity to God is held to be treason to the state, and hence Elizabeth of England executes Catholics at Tyburn as traitors.