“The New Testament,” says the _British Quarterly_, “requires that the Christian shall be a loyal subject of the government under which he lives. ‘Let every soul be subject unto the higher powers. For there is no power but of God; the powers that be are ordained of God: whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God.’”[38] After quoting several texts from the Epistles of St. Paul, of the same general import, the writer in the _British Quarterly_ continues: “Now, it is impossible to find in the New Testament any injunctions of obedience to organized ecclesiastical power, like those here given of obedience to the civil government. It is not ecclesiastical authority, nor a corporate ecclesiastical institution, but the personal God, and the individual conscience in its direct personal relations with God, which is set over against an unrighteous demand of the civil authority in the crucial motto of Peter, ‘We ought to obey God rather than men,’ and in the teaching of Christ, ‘Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s, and unto God the things which are God’s.’ Of conscience as an ecclesiastical corporation, or of conscience as an imputed or vicarious faculty, determined and exercised by one for another, the ethics of the New Testament have no knowledge.”[39] It is hard to realize the ignorance or the bad faith of a man who is capable of making such statements as these. Let us take the last words of the gospel of St. Matthew: “And Jesus coming, spoke to them, saying: All power is given to me in heaven and in earth. Going, therefore, teach ye all nations, … teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you; and, behold, I am with you all days, even to the consummation of the world.” Here surely is an organized body of men, receiving from Christ himself the divine command to teach all the nations of the earth their religious faith and duties, which necessarily carries with it the right to exact obedience. But, lest there be any room for doubt, let us hear Christ himself: “He that heareth you, heareth me: and he that despiseth you despiseth me. And he that despiseth me, despiseth him that sent me.”[40] Again: “And if he will not hear the church, let him be to thee as the heathen and the publican. Amen I say to you, whatsoever you shall bind upon earth, shall be bound also in heaven: and whatsoever you shall loose upon earth, shall be loosed also in heaven.”[41] When Peter and John were brought into court and “charged not to speak at all, nor teach in the name of Jesus,” they should have submitted at once, upon the theory that the state has the right to exact supreme and undivided allegiance; but they appealed to their divine commission, just as the bishops of Germany do to-day, and answered, “We cannot but speak the things which we have seen and heard.”[42]