Re.: Brigham Young, General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles, to the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints abroad, dispersed throughout the Earth, greeting, December 23, 1847. Featured version published as a pamphlet in St. Louis, Missouri, January 1848, Church History Library:
The Kingdom of God consists in correct principles; and it
mattereth not what a man’s religious faith is; whether he be a Presbyterian, or
a Methodist, or a Baptist, or a Latter Day Saint or “Mormon,” a Campbellite, or
a Catholic, or Episcopalian, or Mahometan, or even pagan, or any thing else, if
he will bow the knee, and with his tongue confess that Jesus is the Christ, and
will support good and wholesome laws for the regulation of society, we hail him
as a brother, and will stand by him while he stands by us in these things; for
every man’s religious faith is a matter between his own soul and his God alone;
but if he shall deny the Jesus, if he shall curse God, if he shall indulge in
debauchery and drunkenness, and crime; if he shall lie, and swear, and steal;
if he shall take the name of the Great God in vain, and commit all manner of
abominations, he shall have no place in our midst, for we have long sought to
find a people that will work righteousness, that will distribute justice
equally, that will acknowledge God in all their ways, that will regard those
sacred laws and ordinances which are recorded in that sacred book called the
Bible, which we verily believe, and which we proclaim to the ends of the earth.
(“Appendix 1: General Epistle from the Council of the Twelve Apostles, December
1847,” in Settling the Valley, Proclaiming the Gospel: The General Epistles
of the Mormon First Presidency, ed. Reid L. Neilson and Nathan N. White [Oxford:
Oxford University Press, 2017], 288)
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