Latter Day Saints; United States -- Description and travel
already have two churches formed in Philadelphia, and that a portion of the
members of these churches, have been regular communicants in the Methodist
and Presbyterian Churches? Such, however, is the fact. And we shall not be
greatly surprised, if this "mystery of iniquity" continues to work, and
that those who have dared to "_add to the words_" of God's finished
revelation, shall receive the threatened curse. We shall not be surprised
if "God shall send upon such, strong delusion, that they should believe a
lie," and that they "wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived."
One thing however is distinctly to be noted in the history of this
imposture. There are no Mormons in Manchester, or Palmyra, the place where
this Book of Mormon was pretended to be found. You might as well go down
into the Crater of Vesuvius and attempt to build an ice house amid its
molten and boiling lava, as to convince any inhabitant in either of these
towns, that Jo Smith's pretensions are not the most gross and egregious
falsehood. It was indeed a wise stroke of policy, for those who got up this
imposture, and who calculated to make their fortune by it, to emigrate to a
place where they were wholly unknown. As soon as they had arranged their
apparatus for deceiving weak, and unstable souls--as soon as the Book of
Mormon was printed and their plans formed, the actors in this scene went
off _en masse_ to a part of the country where their former character and
standing were unknown, and where their claim to divine inspiration could be
set up with a little more show of plausibility than it could have been any
where in the state of New York. Mormonism had to grow a number of years in
a western soil, and there acquire a sort of rank and luxuriant growth,
before it could be transplanted with any success to a point near its
birth-place. And even now it keeps very much in the background its grand
pecularities. The Mormon preachers, I am told, in this region, generally
dwell upon the common topics of Christianity, rather than upon the
peculiarities of their system. The object of this is manifest. They wish to
strengthen themselves by a large accession of converts, before they stand
on the peculiarities of their system. But all Christians should beware of
their devices. Their whole system is built upon imposture. They believe
Joseph Smith to be a prophet of God, when there is not a man in our
Penitentiary, that might not with just as much plausibility lay claim to
that character. They believe the BOOK OF MORMON to be a divine revelation,
when it can be proved, that the whole ground-work of it was written by Mr.
Spalding as a Religious and Historical Romance. They believe that they have
the power among them to work miracles, when even "Satan with all" his
"power and signs and lying wonders," and with all his deceivableness, has
not been able to sustain their claim to in a single instance.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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