Charles Haddon Spurgeon was an English Particular Baptist preacher known to admirers as the “Prince of Preachers,” and he preached at the Metropolitan Tabernacle, Newington. He repeatedly compared the Bible to a lion that needs releasing, not defending. That image is the closest documented source of the modern saying. He spoke of the Bible and the gospel, though, not of “truth” in general, and the popular wording is not his.