Gustavus Vasa reduced the gospel to this simple message, which a child could understand, viz.: "To serve God according to His law; to love God above all; to believe in Jesus Christ as our only Saviour; to study and to teach earnestly the word of God; to love our neighbor as ourselves; to observe the ten commandments." He distinctly said that the Scriptures speak neither of tapers, nor palms, nor of masses for the dead, nor of the worship of saints, but that the Word of God, in many places, prohibited these things. He added, "The sacrament of the Lord's Supper has been given to us as a token of the forgiveness of sin, and not to be carried around in a gold or silver frame to cemeteries and other places." Now, was not that a clear statement for a youth brought up a Catholic, whose thought heretofore had seemed only of war? As in England, politics had a hand in expelling the old form of religion and bringing in the new, so it had an influence in Sweden. Geijer, the great church historian of Sweden, says that the Roman Church at that time possessed two-thirds of the soil, and that the wickedness of the church was as great as its possessions. Like Henry VIII. of England, Gustavus Vasa needed the lands to enrich the crown and to secure the friendship of the nobles. He deeply hated priests because they were unionists, that is, they desired to keep the three Scandinavian countries under one crown, which would have left Gustavus crownless. When dying, this great king wrote as his last message: "Rather die a hundred times than abandon the gospel." He pointed the way to glory for Sweden for generations yet unborn. Eric, the son and successor of Gustavus I., seems to have inherited the barbarous nature of some far-back ancestor. He indulged in dangerous and murderous folly. He proposed at the same time for the hand of Elizabeth, Queen of England, Mary Stuart, Queen of Scotland, Princess Renee, of Loraine, and Christina, of Hessen, and after all that, married a peasant woman. At last he was declared incapable and was imprisoned. This shortened his life. His children were excluded by law from the succession, and his brother John ascended the throne. John had married Catherine Jagellon, daughter of Sigismund, king of Poland. She influenced her husband to admit the Jesuits to Sweden, and he made an effort to restore the Romish Church. When the Swedes were converted to the Protestant faith it seems to have been a deep work of grace. They did not fluctuate in their faith. So now they withdrew their love and friendship from their king, whom they considered false to the faith he had promised to sustain. At the death of John the states determined that their rights should not be invaded, so they forced from his son, Sigismund, a decree prohibiting any religion in Sweden except the Lutheran. Sigismund (who had become a Catholic to secure the throne of Poland) signed this decree with great bitterness of heart.