"That the Church claims the right to counsel and advise her members in temporal as well as in spiritual affairs is admitted. Leading Church officials, men of practical experience in pioneer life, have aided the people in establishing settlements throughout the inter-mountain west, and have given them, gratuitously, the benefit of their broader knowledge of things, through counsel and direction, which the people have followed to their advantage; and both the wisdom of the leaders and the good sense of the people are vindicated in the results achieved. All this has been done without the exercise of arbitrary power. It has resulted from wise counsels, persuasively given and willingly followed." But you insist that there is "tyranny and arbitrary ruler-ship" over a community which indorses the priesthood's high claims. I deny the existence of such tyranny as a fact among the "Mormon" people who indorse the priesthood's high claims; and I deny the existence of arbitrary power as a doctrine of the Church, and so does the Address which you pretend to review. Here is the passage: "We deny the existence of arbitrary power in the Church" [why didn't you gentlemen quote that]; "and this because its government is moral government purely, and its forces are applied through kindness, reason, and persuasion. Government by consent of the governed is the rule of the Church." Following is a summary of the word of the Lord, setting forth the principles on which the Church government is to be administered: "The rights of the priesthood are inseparably connected with the powers of heaven, and the powers of heaven cannot be controlled nor handled only upon the principles of righteousness. That they may be conferred upon men, it is true; but when they undertake to cover their sins, or gratify their pride, their vain ambition, or exercise control, or dominion, or compulsion, upon the souls of the children of men, in any degree of unrighteousness, the Spirit of the Lord is grieved; and when it is withdrawn, amen to the priesthood or the authority of that man. No power or influence can or ought to be maintained by virtue of the priesthood, only by persuasion, by longsuffering, by gentleness, and meekness, and by love unfeigned; by kindness, and pure knowledge, which shall greatly enlarge the soul without hypocrisy and without guile."