on of your voice, the answer is clear,--Thy image and
superscription are not here; my knee is for my God, my voice is for my
God; and all the powers of the universe cannot bend the one or awaken
the other without my will. Here I follow the Divine precedent:
"Nebuchadnezzar spake," etc. (Dan. iii. 14-18.) But if Caesar asks my
pennies for any purpose which he comprehends within the aim of his
government, let him have them; they clearly belong to his sphere. I
scorn to hold back what his force can wring from me the next moment;
they are his, the responsibility of taking them is his, and the
responsibility of using them is his. If I am not satisfied with his use
of them, I have nobler means of protest and influence; or, in the last
extremity, I can go forth from his empire and have done with him and his
pennies for ever.

This is the principle on which it seems to me right to act in
church-rate matters. Suppose that one were living in a neighbourhood in
which the church of the district had been built under a special act of
parliament, to be paid for by a rate levied on the householders during a
term of years. It would be our duty to pay year after year our share of
the tax which parliament imposed. The money asked for has Caesar's image
and superscription on it: by using it we consent to Caesar's sway. We
have no right to pick and choose which claims of a government we will
honour, and which we will refuse. We get the good of the government as a
whole, and we pay its claims as a whole, always endeavouring by moral
means to secure that the adjustment shall be righteous and fair. And so
it may become a clear duty to pay for the building of a church which we
never enter, and whose minister regards our ministry as an unauthorized
and mischievous intrusion on his sacred domain. If the Church, by
Caesar's ministry, will have our tribute money, we say, Take it; and if
the demand be very harsh or peremptory, we say, Take it, in very scorn.
But God forbid that we should ever consent to belong to a Church which
can condescend to take tribute by force of the unwilling, and which
gives the adversary thereby such strong temptation to blaspheme.

Such seems to me to be the bearing of this principle on this and kindred
questions. It seems to me distinctly to enjoin on us the course which it
is constantly quoted as denouncing. The money Caesar needs, for the
carrying on of his government in the best way he can, is the first
charge on the