| 211 in the rejection of episcopal government by the followers of Calvin and Knox, and of the sacraments and other outward ordinances by the Quakers; in the unscriptural dogmas and practices of the Anabaptists, and the God-denying heresy of Socinius; and more lately in the schism originated in the very bosom of the church by the disciples of Wesley; wherever the mischievous principle has been acted upon, that every man is competent to form his own creed, and that every man has a right to do so; a principle avowed by some, and acted on more or less by all denominations of dissent, and tending at once to subvert the unity of the church and corrupt the purity of the faith.
Now we perfectly agree with the venerable Archdeacon in the necessity of there being a legitimate and acknowledged priesthood in the church of Christ, in order that we may have "one Lord, one faith, and one baptism." It is peculiarly in this principle that the Saints of the last days rejoice, that when all men were bewildered and in darkness-when the vision of all was covered and had become as the words of a book that was sealed, that then the Lord again sent his holy messengers from on high to renew the covenant which man had broken, and gave them authority to administer his holy ordinances as in the beginning. Therefore, on the necessity of the existence and authority of the holy priesthood we fully agree with the reverend gentleman, but with regard to believing that his church possesses that authority, we beg leave politely to disagree; yet with regard to his remarks upon the authors of dissent, as quoted above, we have no feeling that harmonizes with his censure. However we might condemn dissenters from the principles of truth when dispensed by legal authority, yet we can, not unite with him in the condemnation of those characters whose names he has quoted, because in the day in which they lived, we recognize no people having the authority of God as connected with the priesthood. On the other hand we admire such characters, and say they were men in their respective days, that rose up to call in question an assumed authority, and that they did right to dispute the claims of a hierarchy which, we make bold to say, the Lord recognized not as a priesthood after the order of his glorified Son.
"A heresy, springing from such a source, and of the most pernicious tendency, has, within a few months, appeared among us; and, by the insidious manner in which its errors have been propagated, has, I lament to say, led away several from the truth, and has staggered, at least, if it has not shaken, the faith of others.-Having its origin in the United States of America, a land which the Almighty in His wisdom, perhaps also in His wrath, has permitted to present the sole example of a country in which the godless sentiment is avowed and acted on, that a state has nothing to do with religion, and that all forms of faith are equally right, or equally wrong; having for its founders two miserable men, who at the time they commenced their wicked project, could be looked on as no other than unbaptised heathens, having by their own confession, up to that time, been members of no religious sect, and having never been baptised [baptized], and whose first proceeding was a sacrilegious mockery of God's ordinances, by plunging one another in water; producing in support of its pretended claims, a book, which is to be put upon a level with the word of God in the Old and New Testaments, and of which it is doubtful whether the clumsiness of the forgery or the awfulness of the blasphemy it contains, is most remarkable; having such a origin, such founders, and such support, this sect of Latter Day heretics (for I will not prostitute the holy name they have assumed by applying it to them,) hath spread from the hot bed of errors and schisms where it arose, and hath begun to pollute the members of the catholic and apostolic Church of England and Ireland with its pestilential doctrines."
In a word, we deny his first assertion that the heresy of Mormonism has sprung from such a source. We disclaim it with our strongest feelings, as having sprung from a spirit of dissent; but we assert that those "two miserable men" were, through the teachings of heavenly messengers, made the instruments, in the hands of God, of commencing this glorious work of the last days; and that America, instead of being under the wrath of heaven in this respect, has been favored as the second birth-place of those glorious principles which shall renovate the world, and effectuate by their power the salvation or destruction of the present generation of men. And these principles having thus sprung from this hot bed of errors and schisms, have begun to pollute the members of the catholic and apostolic Church of England and Ireland with their pestilential doctrines. How lamentable! We should have almost supposed that a church so "apostolical" would have been impregnable to the attacks of America schism; we should have thought that the members of so a pure a church would have enjoyed the privilege of knowing whether the doctrines were of men or of God. We would, if we deemed it at all necessary, enter into the subject of examining the claims of the reverend gentleman's church to the title of apostolic, but we think it would really be a work of supererogation; for taking
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