Anti-Mormonism

“ We have always cherished a perfect hatred of Hypocrisy and Knavery in all its forms, but especially when it is found under the cloak of Religion; consequently we utterly despise the whole system of Mormonism, from its great Founder and Prophet down to the lowest clap-trap fooleries, devised to gull the ignorant and unwary. ”

“ I was unable to comprehend religion until it was taught me by the Priesthood; and anything in opposition to their teachings is not worth the ashes of a rye straw. Like Moses' serpent, which swallowed up all other serpents, "Mormonism" has banished all our preconceived notions of religion, and has made us one. Why do we believe and feel as we do on these points? Because God has spoken, and we have believed Him. We are are aiming at something more than religious unity. We have a political existence that none can ignore nor destroy; they think they can, but they cannot. ”

“ If they have not increased, for heaven's sake, for God's sake, for your own soul's sake, for Zion's sake, for Jerusalem's sake, and for the sake of scattered Israel, let them increase from this time henceforth. Let "Mormonism," the faith of the Gospel, which is "Mormonism," continue to increase, and cease all your evil deeds, and return to the Lord, and be honest and true. I tell you that a man cannot believe "Mormonism" as I do, and be a bad man. ”

“ Mormonism is very unpopular, and if they can only do something that will be in opposition to Mormonism it will satisfy the howling priests throughout the land, and a great many of their flocks. As was remarked by one of the brethren, when Jesus was crucified, Pilate and Herod could be made friends. When Mormonism is to be opposed, all men, or at least a great many men, can unite in opposing it. And they want, to go before the people and tell them that they have rooted out slavery, and now they are after Mormonism, and wont you religious fanatics join in? ”

“ He had his Destroying Angels, himself at their head, and when a man rebelled he was murdered.
Mormonism is not, when a first fanaticism has subsided, a religion that would address the popular taste. It is a religion of gloom, of bitterness, of fear, of iron hand to punish the recalcitrant. It demands slavish submission on the part of every man. It insists upon abjection, self-effacement, a surrender of individuality on the part of every woman. ”

“ I frequently think, when our enemies try to destroy us, and are afraid that "Mormonism" is going to overrun the country, what a pity it is that that they cannot see that "Mormonism" is the very principle that preserves them. ”

“ The first of these may be called religionists, the second politicians, and the third counterfeiters, blacklegs, horse-thieves, and cut-throats.
The religious party were chagrined and maddened because “Mormonism” came in contact with their religion, and they could not oppose it from the Scriptures; and thus, like the ancient Jews, when enraged at the exhibition of their follies and hypocrisies by Jesus and his apostles, so these were infuriated against the Mormons because of their discomfiture by them ”

“ Let me try, then, to exhibit and to analyze the causes that keep such a virtuous and sturdy people loyally supporting the leadership of men so unworthy of them that if the people were as bad as the ends to which they are being now directed, modern Mormonism would be destroyed by its own evils. ”

“ If we have no one new principle in our religion, why are we considered innovators, and opposed to Christianity? And why is Christianity in the world in danger if "Mormonism" prevails? It is because that floating Christianity, called so by the world, is a spurious one; they have departed from the doctrine of the Apostles. Then, I ask again, why say, "If Mormonism prevails Christianity is in danger?" for if it is a false Christianity, the quicker it falls the better.
We have examined three general principles, to see if there is anything new in "Mormonism." First, the ministering of angels. ”

“ Obviously, we cannot, consistently with our safety, our well-being, or our essential principles of political and social order, tolerate the enormities of Mormonism, much less permit the formation of a Mormon state. ”

“ Only let a man, whatever his intelligence or character, or national standing, from President Eliot of Harvard to your representative—only let him pursue his investigations of Mormonism and Mormons beyond the lurid tales of hack drivers, bent on gratifying the morbid love in human nature for the unusual and the horrible; or let him push his inquiry beyond sectarian interpretation of the Mormon faith, and sectarian misrepresentation of the Mormon people, and he is doomed to be catalogued as a weak dupe, or a paid agent of the Mormon Church. ”

“ The only form of religion in this country which refuses to conform either to the spirit of progress and improvement and enlightened humanity which characterizes the age in which we live, or to our laws and the genius of our free institutions,—drawing constantly from foreign countries hosts of votaries, impelled hither not by a love of republicanism, but rather by a desire to exchange a political for a religious monarchy,—is Mormonism, which presents an antagonism to our Government, and can scarcely fail to result in national trouble. ”

“ It is an individual knowledge. And if people in ancient times had faith, they had grounds upon which to found their faith, and so have we.
Well, what have we to fear with regard to persecution and with regard to attempts that are made to destroy the principles of "Mormonism." We know they cannot be destroyed." Our enemies, if permitted, may kill the President of our Church, they may kill his Counselors and the Twelve Apostles, they may destroy the Seventies, and even the whole of the Priesthood, but the principles of "Mormonism" they cannot destroy. ”

“ We agree with you that these evils exist to an alarming extent, but most emphatically deny that there is any more cause, at least, to make the Mormons a special object of purity work than there is to purify other communities. If Mormonism is indeed a monster, as you claim, and if social purity, as you assert, is almost unknown among us, then what a horrible condition the Mormon people must be in. ”

“ Would it not be well worth a man's life to prove Mormonism false, if it would save the nation from going to pieces and be the means of saving some 300,000 or 400,000 or more souls for Jesus? Ministers all over the country are crying that thousands are being won over to the Mormon faith every year, and would it not be worth the candle to check this mighty stream of human souls, which, as you say, "are going to certain destruction?" ”

“ Charles L. Thompson of New York, secretary of the Assembly, who, in the course of a speech widely heralded through the secular press of the country, said—and this was the report of the speech according to the dispatches—of Mormonism:
"It is not to be educated, not to be civilized, not to be reformed—it must be crushed. No other organization is so perfect as the Mormon Church except the German Army. This describes Mormonism. Its empty promises deceive. Relentlessly it fastens its victims in its loathsome glue. It has one vulnerable point. ”

“ This anti-christian spirit is now levelling all its batteries of evil speaking and defamation, against the society of Latter Day Saints, vulgarly called "Mormons," exhibiting the straining of the strings of every scheme to exterminate the society, and if possible, drive its members from the land, without leaving them an abiding place any where. ”

“ No faith could well be more liberal than written Mormonism. In the beginning of its mission it was a beautiful ideal to those thoroughly imbued with its inspiration; yet no professors of religion in the nineteenth century could be more bitterly bigoted than the rigidly orthodox and ignorant among the Mormons to-day. Without intending it, probably, and, it may be, even without realizing it, as others do who differ from them, their profession and their practice have been the very antipodes of each other. ”

“ The spirit of opposition to "Mormonism" takes hold of the king on his throne, the president in his chair, and all those would-be sacred priests—those holy hypocrites who stir up the hearts of the people to seek to overthrow the work of God. High and low, great and small are united in one grand union for the destruction of the Saints of God, though they be deadly foes on all other questions. ”

“ Few and simple as these ordinances are, the Church teaches that in order to be of effect they must be administered by divine authority. No man can take the honor upon himself to administer in things pertaining to God. He must be called by direct revelation from God, or be commissioned by a divinely authorized power. Here is where "Mormonism" comes in conflict with all Christendom. ”

“ Some that started with more enthusiasm than has ever been claimed for the Mormons, have, for years, been dying out, or only manifesting an outward and formal existence. On the other hand, too, a similar fate has attended most of the schemes of Socialists, and of those reformers who have relied solely on some doctrine of political economy, while ignoring, as far as they could, any recognition of a supernatural religionism. In distinction from both these, Mormonism has flourished because it has possessed the element of vitality which was respectively wanting to each. ”

“ If history is reliable many of the popes were steeped in crime, yet we do not condemn the Catholic church of today by that history. Protestantism has done many cruel things in red-handed fanatical rage, but we do not now hold it responsible for crimes of its past. The daily press frequently tells of crimes committed by ministers of the Gospel, but we do not condemn the class for the misdeeds of some of its members. Neither should we condemn the Mormons and Mormonism of today for what their enemies said of them forty, fifty or sixty years ago. ”

“ The foolish, and those who are controlled by the hissings of the priests, rage against the work of God, and corrupt politicians urge them on. There is not an honest man in the United States or in the world but what, if he could hear this doctrine taught without knowing that it was a "Mormon" who was teaching it, would drink down these principles. They would swallow every word and say, "That is true; you have more light than I have." But if you say "Mormon," that sends the fat into the fire, and arrays their prejudices against you. ”

“ Now, to tell the truth, there are but few, in comparison with the numbers that now live, who are rabid against and seek to destroy the kingdom of God. A great portion of the human family are honorable men and women, and they would just as soon that "Mormonism" should live as any other ism. The few who seek to destroy the kingdom of God are priests, politicians, and office seekers, and they would care nothing about it, only they are afraid we will take away their place and nation. ”

“ To accept it would be to concede that, in a highly civilized nation like ours, and in so late a century, the acceptance of religious beliefs which, to the nonbelievers, seem gross superstitions, is so unusual that it may be classed with the miraculous. Investigation easily disproves this.
It is true that the effrontery which has characterized Mormonism from the start has been most daring. ”

“ God has raised up a Prophet, brought forth the Book of Mormon, influenced the people to lay the foundation of his kingdom, taking two of a nation, and one of a family. When a person is worked upon by the Spirit to believe the truth of the Gospel, the Devil tells him it is a falsehood. And again, "the loss of my good name" exercises a powerful influence against a person's embracing the truth, for if he determines to adhere to "Mormonism," his unbelieving friends take it for granted that he is deluded. Therefore but a few prove themselves worthy of the truth by taking the right path. ”

“ Schroeder introduces from them. The point now contended for respecting these men who stand as sponsors for the Spaulding theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon, is simply this: that being ardent sectarian priests zealous for their particular brand of orthodoxy, which Mormonism opposed as false doctrine; [55] and adding to this cause of bitterness the further fact that in some instances these men felt the sense of personal grievance against Joseph Smith and the Mormon Church—renders them incompetent to be reliable witnesses on the questions at issue. ”

“ I know how it looks to the Saints, but "Mormonism" to men that have not the Spirit of God is a great mystery and a strange work indeed, they do not understand the ways or work of God; it looks to them like leading the people to destruction; but in all cases where destruction comes in all ages of the world, it is where the counsels of the Prophets of God are not fully carried out, but where the people deviate in some measure from their counsel. ”

“ It is the Mormon's religion of faith, his belief in the Bible and in the wisdom of Solomon and David, that enables the monster of polygamy to flaunt its power and its filth in the face of the morality of the nineteenth century, which has outgrown the Jehovah of the Jews.
Every religion must be tried at the bar of human justice, and stand or fall by the verdict there. It has no right to crouch behind the theory of "inspiration" and demand immunity from criticism; and yet that is just what every one of them does. They all claim that we have no right to use our reason on their inventions. ”