the Reformation in its broadest form, as declared by Penn. Taking into
consideration the religious character of the Americans, as well as the
learning and acumen of that most remarkable body of men who
constituted the Continental Congress, it seems not only not
improbable, but probable, and indeed necessary to conclude, that the
proposition that "all men are created equal" was intended to be the
epitome of the doctrine of the Reformation, as that doctrine was
broadened by the influence of Penn and his followers. As the
Governments of Europe were at that time acting on the political
philosophy of feudalism and mediaevalism, which in its last analysis
was based on the proposition that all men are created unequal, or that
some are created equal and some unequal, the Declaration, if it be
true that it based the American political philosophy upon the broadest
doctrine of the Reformation, announced an American System as opposed
to the European System.

From the doctrine of equality arising from the common creation of all
men by a personal Creator to whom all were equally related, it is
declared by the Declaration to follow as a 'self-evident' truth that
there are certain rights, which are attached to all men by endowment
of the Creator as being the correlative of the unalienable needs of
all men, and which inasmuch as they arise from the universal
limitations which the Creator has imposed, are as unalienable as the
needs themselves. These unalienable rights are declared to be the
rights of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.

The doctrine of unalienable rights, necessarily supposes a universal
law, for the conception of law must precede the conception of right.
This law, as conceived of by the Declaration is a common and universal
law. In the first part of the preamble this universal common law is
spoken of as "the law of Nature and of Nature's God." Inasmuch as the
rights claimed are those which depend for their existence upon
revelation as well as reason, it is evident that this common and
universal law to which the Declaration appeals, is the "law of nature
and of nations," of the scholars of the Reformation, which was
conceived of as based on revelation and reason, and as governing every
relationship of men, of bodies corporate, of communities, of states
and of nations. Out of this conception there had already grown that
great division of the law which deals with the temporary relations
between independent state