Gustavus Adolphus and Axel Oxenstiern were the heroes of their time in the cause of religious liberty in continental Europe.  Though intensely troubled in their administration by the Roman Catholics and the Anabaptists, the most intolerant of intolerants in those days, they never opposed force against the beliefs or worships of either; and when force was used against the papal powers, it was only so far as to preserve unto themselves and their fellow-confessors the inalienable right to worship God according to the dictates of their own consciences without molestation or disturbance.  In their scheme of colonization in this Western World, first and last, the invitation was to all classes of Christians in suffering and persecution for conscience’ sake, who were favorable to a free state where they could have the free enjoyment of their property and religion, to cast in their lot.  In the first charter, confirmed by all the authorities of the kingdom and rehearsed in the instructions given by the throne for the execution of the intention, special provision was made for the protection of the convictions and worship of those not of the same confession with that for which the government provided.  Though a Lutheran colony, under a Lutheran king, sustained and protected by a Lutheran government, the Calvinists had place and equal protection in it from the very beginning; and when the Quakers came, they were at once and as freely welcomed on the same free principles, as also the representatives of the Church of England.

As to William Penn, though contemplating above all the well-being and furtherance of the particular Society of which he was an eminent ornament and preacher, consistency with himself, as well as the established situation of affairs, demanded of him the free toleration of the Church, however unpalatable to his Society, and with it of all religious sects and orders of worship.  From his prison at Newgate he had written that the enaction of laws restraining persons from the free exercise of their consciences in matters of religion was but “the knotting of whipcord on the part of the enactors to lash their own posterity, whom they could never promise to be conformed for ages to come to a national religion.”  Again and again had he preached and proclaimed the folly and wickedness of attempting to change the religious opinions of men by the application of force—­the utter unreasonableness of persecuting orderly people in this world about things which belong to the next—­the gross injustice of sacrificing any one’s liberty or property on account of creed if not found breaking the laws relating to natural and civil things.