Governments and Laws

One section of the Doctrine and Covenants does not speak in the Lord’s voice at all. It speaks as “we”, states twelve positions in a row, and marks five of them as things it does not believe — a form the corpus uses in only one other place.

What this page maps. Modern revelation, reported as the text gives it — with one exception the page marks throughout. D&C 98 speaks in a first-person divine voice (“I, the Lord God, make you free”, D&C 98:8). D&C 134 does not: every one of its twelve verses is first-person plural, and the wiki therefore attributes its statements to the declaration itself rather than to a revealed voice. Which body adopted it, when, and where is not in this wiki’s source text and is not stated. Real-world constitutional and legal questions are external material outside this wiki’s scope; the wiki reports what these texts say.

Account

A section in a voice the rest of the book does not use

The clearest textual fact about section 134 is grammatical. It never uses the thus-saith-the-Lord formula, never speaks as “I”, and states each of its positions in the same frame: “We believe that governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man” (D&C 134:1).

That frame is countable. The formula “We believe” stands at forty distinct frozen verses in the corpus, of which eleven are in this one section (D&C 134:1–8, 134:10–12) and twelve are in the Articles of Faith (Articles of Faith 1:1–10, 1:12, 1:13); the remaining seventeen are spread across the other corpora. The negative form is rarer and is concentrated here: “We do not believe” stands at eleven distinct frozen verses in the corpus, five of them in this section (D&C 134:4, 134:7, 134:9, 134:10, 134:12); the other six are all in the Book of Mormon (Alma 8:11, Alma 18:3, Alma 21:8, Alma 31:16, Alma 44:9, Helaman 9:2), and none is in any other frozen work.

Because the section’s own grammar sets it apart from the revelations around it, this page attributes its content to the declaration and not to a revealed voice. A caution the wiki states rather than hides: the section’s own verse text nowhere characterizes the section — it never calls itself a declaration, and never denies being a revelation. Any such characterization is available only from the excluded headnote apparatus, which is outside this wiki’s source text (charter §4). What is available, and what this page rests on, is the voice itself — twelve verses of “we”, with no divine first person anywhere in them.

⚖️ Interpretation — weigh this. () The declaration and the Articles of Faith appear to be built on the same rhetorical instrument, and one article covers the declaration’s subject. The evidence is the shared frame and the shared topic: - D&C 134:5: “We believe that all men are bound to sustain and uphold the respective governments in which they reside, while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments…” - Articles of Faith 1:12: “We believe in being subject to kings, presidents, rulers, and magistrates, in obeying, honoring, and sustaining the law.”

What is textual: both verses open with the same two words, both state a duty toward civil authority, and both use the word “sustain”/“sustaining” of that duty. What is not textual is any claim that one text depends on the other, or that they were composed together — the shared run is two words long, which is far below what this wiki treats as evidence of textual relationship, and the shared topic is one many texts share. This is offered as a parallel to weigh, not as a settled connection; the reader is invited to compare the two lists and judge.

What the declaration asserts

The twelve verses fall into a small number of moves, and the wiki reports them in the declaration’s own terms.

Government is instituted, and accountable. “governments were instituted of God for the benefit of man; and… he holds men accountable for their acts in relation to them, both in making laws and administering them” (D&C 134:1). The condition of a peaceful government is stated as three protections: “the free exercise of conscience, the right and control of property, and the protection of life” (D&C 134:2).

Conscience is placed outside the magistrate’s reach, in the section’s sharpest pair of clauses: “the civil magistrate should restrain crime, but never control conscience; should punish guilt, but never suppress the freedom of the soul” (D&C 134:4). The same verse states the limit on the other side too — the exemption does not extend to conduct: men are amenable to God alone for religion “unless their religious opinions prompt them to infringe upon the rights and liberties of others” (D&C 134:4).

Obedience is stated with its own condition attached. Citizens are bound to sustain their governments “while protected in their inherent and inalienable rights by the laws of such governments”, and “sedition and rebellion are unbecoming every citizen thus protected” (D&C 134:5) — the qualifier “thus protected” doing work the sentence would not do without it.

Church discipline is bounded. Religious societies may deal with their members “for disorderly conduct, according to the rules and regulations of such societies”, but no such society “has authority to try men on the right of property or life… or to inflict any physical punishment upon them. They can only excommunicate them from their society, and withdraw from them their fellowship.” (D&C 134:10).

Two verses run against the grain of the rest, and the wiki reports them rather than passing over them. One permits self-defence outside the courts “in times of exigency, where immediate appeal cannot be made to the laws” (D&C 134:11). The other addresses servitude, and states a position of non-interference: “we do not believe it right to interfere with bond-servants, neither preach the gospel to, nor baptize them contrary to the will and wish of their masters, nor to meddle with or influence them in the least to cause them to be dissatisfied with their situations in this life” (D&C 134:12). The wiki reports what the verse says and does not soften it; evaluating it is a moral and historical question outside what this page can settle from the text.

The revealed section on the same subject

Where the declaration speaks as “we”, section 98 speaks in the first person and reaches a partly overlapping position by a different route. It states a rule about which laws bind: “that law of the land which is constitutional, supporting that principle of freedom in maintaining rights and privileges, belongs to all mankind, and is justifiable before me” (D&C 98:5); and then the boundary, in one clause: “as pertaining to law of man, whatsoever is more or less than this, cometh of evil” (D&C 98:7).

Two of its verses carry wording that runs with older texts.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 98:8: “I, the Lord God, make you free, therefore ye are free indeed; and the law also maketh you free.” - John 8:36: “If the Son therefore shall make you free, ye shall be free indeed.”

Divergences reported: the gospel’s verse is conditional (“If the Son therefore shall make you free”, John 8:36); the revelation’s is declarative and adds a second freeing agent the gospel verse has no counterpart for — “and the law also maketh you free” (D&C 98:8). The run “free indeed” stands at exactly two distinct frozen verses in the corpus — these two.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 98:9: “Nevertheless, when the wicked rule the people mourn.” - Proverbs 29:2: “When the righteous are in authority, the people rejoice: but when the wicked beareth rule, the people mourn.”

Divergences reported: the proverb is a matched pair, stating the righteous case first and the wicked case second; the revelation keeps only the second half. The proverb’s “when the wicked beareth rule” (Proverbs 29:2) is compressed to “when the wicked rule” (D&C 98:9). The run “the people mourn” stands at three distinct frozen verses in the corpus: these two and Numbers 14:39, where the sense is unrelated (“the people mourned greatly” at a report from the spies) — disclosed, not paired.

The remedy the revelation states next is procedural, and it is the one place in these two sections where a duty is placed on the electorate: “honest men and wise men should be sought for diligently, and good men and wise men ye should observe to uphold; otherwise whatsoever is less than these cometh of evil” (D&C 98:10).

One clause on the same subject from a third section

A single verse elsewhere in this cluster states the division of claims in borrowed words, in the middle of instructions about buying land.

[Textual] — distinctive shared phrasing. () - D&C 63:26: “Nevertheless, I, the Lord, render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar’s.” - Matthew 22:21: “They say unto him, Caesar’s. Then saith he unto them, Render therefore unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s; and unto God the things that are God’s.”

Divergences reported: three, and the third is the most striking. The gospel’s verse drops “therefore” in the revelation. The gospel’s second half — “and unto God the things that are God’s” (Matthew 22:21) — has no counterpart in the revelation, which needs only the first half for its purpose. And the grammatical subject changes: in the gospel the sentence is an imperative addressed to questioners, while in the revelation the speaker performs the act himself (“I, the Lord, render unto Cæsar”, D&C 63:26). The spelling diverges too: the ligature form “Cæsar” stands at exactly one distinct frozen verse in the corpus — this one — while the form “Caesar” stands at eleven, including Matthew 22:21. The context is a land purchase: the verses on either side instruct “that you should purchase the lands, that you may have advantage of the world” (D&C 63:27), and the treatment of that instruction is on The Gathering to Zion.

Significance

Placing the declaration next to section 98 shows two texts reaching similar conclusions in incompatible registers. Section 98 grounds the binding force of civil law in a divine warrant — the constitutional law is “justifiable before me” (D&C 98:5) — and everything outside that measure “cometh of evil” (D&C 98:7). The declaration grounds nothing in a warrant; it states positions and marks its disagreements, and its most repeated move is a disclaimer of what it does not believe.

That difference in voice is the fact this page most wants a reader to notice, because it is easy to lose. Both sit inside the same book, printed the same way; only the grammar tells them apart. What follows from a book containing both a first-person divine law and a first-person plural declaration of belief is a question the wiki leaves with the reader.

Key references

D&C 134:1–3 — government instituted, and what a peaceful one must secure
D&C 134:4, 134:9 — conscience, and the refusal to mingle religion with civil government
D&C 134:5–8 — obedience, honour to office, and punishment by the nature of the offence
D&C 134:10–12 — the limits of church discipline; self-defence; bond-servants
D&C 98:4–10 — the constitutional measure, freedom, and the duty to seek out honest men
D&C 63:26 — Cæsar’s things, inside a land instruction

Articles of Faith · The Law of the Church · The Law of War and Forgiveness · Common Consent · The Gathering to Zion · Index · Connections

Sources

Doctrine and Covenants sections 134 and 98:4–10, with D&C 63:26 (verse text only; headnotes excluded). John 8, Proverbs 29, Matthew 22, and Articles of Faith 1 quoted alongside them; Numbers 14 quoted inside a disclosure.

Every quote is verbatim from the frozen source text, cited to its exact reference and checked character-for-character; no quote crosses a verse boundary. Four connection records are registered on this page — three [textual] and one [interpretive] — all submitted asserted_by: wiki. Phrase distributions are counts of distinct frozen verses in the corpus, derived by script at the time of writing on the stated basis.