“ All the ingenuity of the world combined could not add any thing to the structure of the human body without injuring it; neither could they take any thing from it without doing it an injury; it is best just as it is; so is all the other works of God, in the spiritual as well as the natural kingdom; they are best as God formed them; to alter them any way is to make them worse instead of better. ”

“ Men may invent order after order, and scheme after scheme, but as long as their order or orders of things do not consist in having apostles, prophets, evangelists, pastors, teachers, gifts, healings, miracles, divers kinds of tongues, the interpretation of tongues, &c. their order is adverse to the order of heaven, and is not the ancient order of things as revealed in the scriptures. ”

“ In attempting to set forth this order of things, we must begin where it begins; for if we commence right, we can end right, and if not, it will be impossible for us to understand the subject. We ask then what was the first thing that our heavenly Father done, when he began to establish this order among men? ”

“ These men thus qualified for their office, went forth, and called upon the rest of their fellow men to believe, repent of their sins, be baptized for the remission of them, and receive the Holy Spirit, which they ministered unto them by the laying on of their hands, and the people thus receiving the Holy Ghost were enabled by this gift, to prophecy, to see visions, and to dream dreams, and by these means grow up to be witnesses for Jesus Christ also, and become apostles, and obtain all the powers of the first ”