| 526 In the first number of the Messenger and Advocate is a letter from Sylvester Smith confessing his wrong in his difficulty with President Joseph Smith and fully exonerating President Smith. 2
as free citizens or of worshipping God as they choose and that any attempt to the contrary is an assumption unwarrantable in the revelations of heaven and strikes at the root of civil liberty and is a subversion of all equitable principles between man and man.
We believe that God has set his hand the second time to recover the remnant of his people Israel, and that the time is near when he will bring them from the four winds, with songs of everlasting joy and reinstate them upon their own lands which he gave their fathers by covenant.
And further: We believe in embracing good wherever it may be found; of proving all things and holding fast that which is righteous.
This in short is our belief and we stand ready to defend it upon its own foundation whenever it is assailed by men of character and respectability. And while we act upon these broad principles we trust in God that we shall never be confounded!
Neither shall we wait for opposition; but with a firm reliance upon the justice of such a course and the propriety of disseminating a knowledge of the same we shall endeavor to persuade men to turn from error and vain speculation; investigate the plan which heaven has devised for our salvation; prepare for the year of recompense and the day of vengeance which are near and thereby be ready to meet the Bridegroom!
Oliver Cowdery.
Kirtland, Ohio October 1834.
-Messenger and Advocate, vol. 1 p. 2.
2 "Dear Brother:-Having heard that certain reports are circulating abroad prejudicial to the character of Bro. Joseph Smith Jr. and that said reports purport to have come from me I have thought proper to give the public a plain statement of the fact concerning this matter. It is true that some difficulties arose between Bro. J. Smith, Jr., and myself in our travels the past summer to Missouri; and that on our return to this place I laid my grievances before a general council where they were investigated in full in an examination which lasted several days; and the result showed to the satisfaction of all present I believe but especially to myself, that in all things Bro. J. S., Jr. had conducted worthily and adorned his profession as a man of God while journeying to and from Missouri. And it is no more than just that I should confess my faults by saying unto all people so far as your valuable and instructive paper has circulation that the things that I accused Bro. S. of were without foundation; as was most clearly proven by the evidence which was called to my satisfaction. And in fact I have not at any time withdrawn my confidence and fellowship from Bro. J. S. Jr. but thought that he had inadvertently erred, being but flesh and blood, like the rest of Adam's family. But I am now perfectly satisfied that the errors of which I accused him before the council did not exist and were never committed by him; and my contrition has been and still continues to be deep because I admitted thoughts into my heart which were not right concerning him and because that I have been the means of giving rise to reports which have gone abroad censuring the conduct of Bro. J. S. Jr. which reports are without foundation. And I hope that this disclosure of the truth written by my own hand and sent abroad into the world through the medium of the Messenger and Advocate, will put a
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