Jedediah M. Grant

“ This ought to be a sufficient reason for any true hearted Latter-day Saint to turn away from him with disgust, and treat all such men and principles according to their desert, which is, to let them entirely alone; for there is not a more despicable principle ever existed in heaven, earth, or hell, than to prove a traitor to our God, our cause, and our friends, and bring distress upon the innocent, and that too by turning against the very cause that a man has spent a portion of his life to build up, and declared, while in the faith, that it was true and righteous ”

“ Rigdon’s mind clearer, than to give the following quotations, from the pen of an eminent writer.
”imagination may be employed for calling into being evils which have no existence, or for exaggerating those which are real; for fostering malevolent feelings, and for imputing those with whom we are connected motives and intentions which have no foundation in truth. Finally, an ill regulated imagination may be employed in occupying the mind with waking dreams and vain delusions, to the exclusion of all those high pursuits which ought to employ the faculties of a rational being. ”

“ Rigdon’s expulsion from the church will appear in the Nauvoo Neighbor. But if Mr. R. felt that his cause was a just one, and that his only “crime was in wishing to go to Pittsburg to live,” why did he not appear on the public stand and plead his own defence when he was invited so to do? He could have sounded his defence in the ears of more than six thousand people, in the very place where his grievances should have been redressed. Is he not a man of sense? Does he not possess a flow of language and eloquence not often surpassed? Yes he does. ”

“ Has he ever deserted Joseph, Hyrum, his brethren, or the cause, in one instance, since the foundation of this church? No, never, in one instance.” Mr. Rigdon, while on his journey from Nauvoo to Pittsburg, stopped at St. Louis, and published, in the “People’s Organ,” a letter containing the reason of his expulsion from the Church, which was, as he said, for the crime of wishing to go to Pittsburg and live; but soon after he arrived in Pittsburg, his imagination furnished him with other reasons—evil, after evil presented themselves to his longing vision ”