EN
John Crell (1590-1633) was one of the most influential representatives of the intellectual school of the Polish Brethren. For many years he worked as a lecturer at the antitrinitarian Rakow Academy, and his writings were known throughout Europe. His idea of tolerance laid out in the treatise On the freedom of conscience was particularly interesting and in all likelihood influenced John Locke’s concept of tolerance. The purpose of this article is to present Crell’s protoliberalism, which emerges from his idea of tolerance. This protoliberalism consists of a number of values, concepts, and insights that will eventually become the constitutive traits of modern liberal thought.