They also agree in the belief that the religion of Christ asserts the equality of all men before God; that it confers upon no man, or class of men, a monopoly of Heaven’s favors; neither does it give to a portion of his children any means of knowing his will not common to the race. They believe the laws of the soul are so plain that they may be easily comprehended by all who sincerely seek to know them, without the intervention of any human teacher or expounder. Hence they regard no teaching as authoritative but that of the Spirit of God, and reject all priesthoods but the universal priesthood which Christianity establishes. They believe that every one whose soul is imbued with a knowledge of the truth is qualified to be its minister, and it becomes his duty and his pleasure, by his every word and action, to preach it to the world. It follows, then, that, as Christ prepares and appoints his own ministers, and as they receive their commissions only from him, they are accountable to him alone for their exercise, and not to any human authority whatsoever. They therefore reject all human ordinations, appointments, or control, or any designation by man of an order of men to preach the gospel, as invasions of his rightful prerogative. Amongst the prevailing sins, against which they feel bound to bear testimony, are slavery and war; and it is alleged as the main reason why many of them have disconnected themselves from the professedly Christian denominations to which they belonged, that those bodies gave their sanction to those anti-Christian practices. They believe slaveholding to be sinful under all circumstances, and that, therefore, it should be immediately abandoned. They believe, not only that national wars are forbidden by Christianity, but that the taking of human life for any purpose, by governments or individuals, is incompatible with its spirit. A large proportion of them, also, consider all resort to punishment, as a penalty for crime, equally inconsistent with the law of love. Hence they deem it their duty to withhold their voluntary sanction or support from human governments, and all institutions which claim the right to exercise powers which they thus regard as unlawful.