Mormon Publications: 19th Century - Mormonism unveiled: Zion's Watchman unmasked

PRATT, Parley Parker. Mormonism unveiled: Zion's Watchman unmasked, and its editor, Mr. L. R. Sunderland, exposed: truth vindicated: the Devil mad, and priestcraft in danger! By P. P. Pratt, minister of the gospel. New-York: Printed for the publisher, 1838. 47 pp. 19 cm.

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Three months after he published the Voice of Warning, Parley Pratt's missionary efforts in New York had become vigorous enough to draw the attention of the local clergy. Between January 13 and March 3, 1838, La Roy Sunderland, editor of the Methodist Zion's Watchman, attacked the Mormons in an eight-part article which used the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, Voice of Warning, and, in the last installment, the father of all anti-Mormon books, E. D. Howe's Mormonism Unveiled [sic] (Painesville, 1834). When Mormonism Unveiled first appeared, the Saints all but ignored it. But four years later, particularly when his own work was attacked in print, Parley could only respond in kind. In April 1838, just before leaving New York for Far West, he published his reply to Sunderland-the earliest surviving response to an anti-Mormon work. Like Voice of Warning, it established a formula which would be followed by Mormon pamphleteers for another century, balancing a defense of the Church's claims with an assault on the religion of the attacker.

Sunderland's article, also printed separately as Mormonism Exposed and Refuted (New York: Piercy & Reed, Printers, 1838), attacks the Book of Mormon by pointing out grammatical errors and what it claims are inconsistencies and plagiarisms. Quoting from the Book of Mormon, Doctrine and Covenants, and Voice of Warning, it argues that Mormonism is absurd, inconsistent with the Bible, and exists merely to fleece its new converts. The eighth installment repeats E. D. Howe's Spaulding-Rigdon theory of the origin of the Book of Mormon.

With considerable enthusiasm and a touch of vitriol, Parley Pratt responds to the bulk of Sunderland's objections. In replying to the Spaulding-Rigdon theory, he recounts his own conversion and his part in introducing Sidney Rigdon to Mormonism. At one point he oversteps himself a bit when he writes (pg. 15), "I will state as a prophecy, that there will not be an unbelieving Gentile upon this continent 50 years hence; and if they are not greatly scourged, and in a great measure overthrown, within five or ten years from this date, then the Book of Mormon will have proved itself false." At another (p. 27) he anticipates the dramatic ideas outlined by Joseph Smith in the King Follett discourse by suggesting that the Saints will come to "have the same knowledge that God has" and hence be properly called "GODS, even the sons of God." He further announces (p. 31), "But we worship a God, who has both body and parts; who has eyes, mouth, and ears, and who speaks when he pleases-to whom he pleases, and sends them where he pleases." As a final thrust, he attacks some of the Methodist doctrines, particularly the concept of God "without body or parts" and the practice of infant baptism.

Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley, A Descriptive Bibliography of the Mormon Church. Volume Two, 1848-1852. Forthcoming.

Used by permission of the author.