He suspended all penal laws against all classes of Nonconformists.

He authorised both Roman Catholics and Protestant Dissenters to perform their worship publicly.

He forbade his subjects, on pain of his highest displeasure, to molest any religious assembly.
He also abrogated all those acts which imposed any religious test as a qualification for any civil or military office.

[239] That the Declaration of Indulgence was unconstitutional is a point on which both the great English parties have always been entirely agreed.
Every person capable of reasoning on a political question must perceive that a monarch who is competent to issue such a declaration is nothing less than an absolute monarch.

Nor is it possible to urge in defence of this act of James those pleas by which many arbitrary acts of the Stuarts have been vindicated or excused.