{XLIX} In this important communication he no where considers anything else as the cause of their persecution, but argues at length in favor of their right to the entertainment of their religious views, eccentric howsoever they might be, so long as they did not interfere with the rights of others. "They have the right constitutionally guaranteed to them," he remarks, "and it is indefeasible, to worship Joe Smith as a man, an angel, or even as the only true and living God, and to call their habitation Zion, the Holy Land, or even heaven itself. Indeed, there is nothing so absurd or ridiculous that they have not a right to adopt as their religion, so that in its exercise they do not interfere with the rights of others." [39] The people of Clay county when they called upon the Saints to peaceably remove from their borders and seek a locality where they could form a community that should be largely, if not exclusively, made up of their own Church membership, indicated very clearly that it was the religion of the Saints that was the chief cause of complaint against them. In a document they published setting forth the reasons why they suggested such removal, they said; "The religious tenets of this people are so different from the present churches of the age, that they always have, and always will, excite deep prejudices against them in any populous country where they may locate. We, therefore, in a spirit of frank and friendly kindness, do advise them to seek a home where they may obtain large and separate bodies of land, and have a community of their own." [40] Again, after the surrender at Far West, when the Church leaders had been betrayed into bondage; after the Saints had delivered up their arms; after they had signed over their properties to defray the expenses of the "war;" and when the whole body of the Church was making hasty preparations to depart from the state, a number of the brethren were assembled on the temple square at Far West, and in the course of a long speech, which he read [41] to them, General John B. Clark said: "I am sorry, gentlemen, to see so great a number of apparently intelligent men found in the situation you are; and oh! that I could invoke that Great Spirit, the Unknown God, to rest upon you, and make you sufficiently intelligent to break that chain of superstition, and liberate you from those fetters of fanaticism with which you are bound--that you no longer worship a man! I would advise you to scatter abroad, and never again organize yourselves with Bishops, Presidents, {L} etc., lest you excite the jealousies of the people, and subject yourselves to the same calamities that have now come upon you."