ould seem, to resort to external evidence
to prove that the Declaration is based on the doctrine of the
Reformation. In several places it seems to expressly declare that the
rights claimed by America are claimed under the law of nature and of
nations based on divine revelation and on human reason. In the first
sentence, it declares that "the law of Nature and of Nature's God"
entitles the Americans,--it having "become necessary" for them "to
dissolve the political bands which have connected them with" the
people of Great Britain,--to "assume a separate and equal station
among the powers of the earth." In the next it declares not only "that
all men are created equal," but that they have "unalienable rights of
life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness," not by virtue of any
social contract or other form of consent, but by "endowment,"--that
is, by voluntary gift and grant--of "their Creator." This doctrine of
"endowment" of men with "unalienable rights," by "their Creator," is
of course the Christian doctrine. In the concluding part of the
Declaration, it is declared not only that the United Colonies, as "the
United States of America," are "free and independent states," but that
they "of right ought to be" such, and in that paragraph the
"connection between them and the State of Great Britain" is not merely
declared to be "totally dissolved" but it is also declared that it
"ought to be" so dissolved. There was certainly no "right" of the
United Colonies, as the United States of America, to be free and
independent states and to declare the connection between them and the
State of Great Britain to be dissolved except upon principles of some
implied common law which was supreme over the Constitution of the
State of Great Britain and the Charters and Constitutions of the
Colonies, for none of these Constitutions or Charters made provision
for the dissolution of the connection on any contingency.

There is necessarily implied in the statement that "all men are
created equal" and that "they are endowed by their Creator with
certain unalienable rights, among which are life, liberty and the
pursuit of happiness," the conception of the right of human equality
as a divine right. But is there any other basis than divine right on
which to rest a doctrine of human equality? A doctrine of human
equality by human right, is a doctrine of equality by consent. But if
a man can consent regarding his equality with another man or with
other