There is no regularly constituted church of Christ on earth, nor any person qualified to administer any church ordinances; nor can there be until new apostles are sent by the Great Head of the Church for whose coming I am seeking.

Reflect upon your own spirit, and believe Him that said it to His overzealous disciples, 'You know not what spirit you are of.'

Civil government is an ordinance of God, to conserve the civil peace of a people, so far as concerns their bodies and goods.

The sovereign power of all civil authority is founded in the consent of the people.

Is it possible that since I hunt, I may be hunting for the life of my Savior and the blood of the Lamb of God? I have fought against many differing sorts of conscience. Is it beyond all possibility and hazard that I have not fought against God, and that I have not persecuted Jesus in some of them?

Even if the civil magistrate is so gifted as to prophesy in the church, yet in the sphere of his civil duties he is forbidden to call down fire from heaven, that is, to procure or inflict any corporal punishment upon offenders in religious doctrine or practice, remembering Christ's admonition that He came not to destroy men's lives, but to save them.

That cannot be a true religion which needs carnal weapons to uphold it.