How Close the Time?

"That to secure these Rights [to Life, Liberty, and the Pursuit of Happiness] Governments are instituted among men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed, that whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these Ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it . . . ."

The Declaration of Independence
Action of Second Continental Congress
July 4, 1776

"There is a time for all things, a time to preach and a time to pray, but those times have passed away. There is a time to fight, and that time has now come."

. . . Peter Muhlenberg
From a Lutheran sermon
Read at Woodstock, Virginia
1776