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Source: Church History Vol. 3 Chapter 34 Page: 659 (~1872)

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659 "Our relation to these men as being their immediate successors demands of us, not a blind adherence to their views without regard to the works they have left as expository of the hope and promises actuating them, but a full recognition of all their good thoughts, words, and acts, as incentives to the performance of good by us; and an acknowledgment of their errors, with the view to shun them, if the circumstances and conditions of our lives present them to us for action. We are not concluded by their evil deeds to our exclusion from salvation, and consequent condemnation; nor are we to be saved upon their meritorious acts. We are only affected by either, as they may influence our lives for good or for evil. As their compeers we must weigh them and their measures together, or in comparison; whatever of either may be in harmony with the other may be received as the real standard of estimation, and that which is inharmonious in either with the other may be discarded, and if erroneous by other tests, we are not bound by it.

"Adam is not to be judged by his fall alone, but by all the circumstances connected with his fall and his life before and after it.

"Moses is not to be judged by the murder of the Egyptian and by his rebellion at Meribah alone; but by all the circumstances surrounding him, and the entire conditions of his life.

"The measures which were introduced by Moses, or through his instrumentality, were for the good of all men, but more especially for the good of those people for whom he thought and toiled. Those measures have become the common foundation upon which the whole fabric of the laws governing the rights of man is based, and must have originated from principles of right action existing in Adam's time, and from that time receiving the sanction of every generation to Moses; but by him reduced to a written code. If he by his life contravened any of the provisions of that written code, he must be condemned by it; but in whatever way he honored that code, then by it and his life he bears record of the good to us.

(page 659)

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