Pratt, Parley Parker.
A voice of warning and instruction to all people, containing a declaration of faith and doctrine of the Church of the Latter Day Saints, commonly called Mormons. By P.P. Pratt, minister of the gospel. New-York, Printed by W. Sanford, 29 Ann-St., 1837.
xx, [21]–215 p. 15 cm.
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Touched by the dissension that swept the Mormon community in Kirtland, Parley Pratt fled to New York in July 1837 to engage in the renewing and purifying of himself by preaching the gospel. However, few New York doors opened to him, so impelled by his natural literary instincts, he retired to his room to write. In two months he produced the most important of all noncanonical Mormon books, the Voice of Warning. Published in an edition of 3000, Voice of Warning was not quite the first Mormon tract nor the first outline of the tenets of Mormonism, but it was the first to emphasize the differences between Mormonism and traditional Christianity. More important, it erected a standard for all future Mormon pamphleteers by setting down a formula for describing Mormonism’s basic doctrines and by listing biblical proof-texts, arguments, examples which would be used by others for the next hundred years. It was also an extremely effective missionary tract, and before the close of the century, Voice of Warning went through more than thirty editions in English and was translated into Danish, Dutch, French, German, Spanish, and Swedish.
Excerpted and edited from Peter Crawley and Chad J. Flake,
A Mormon Fifty: an exhibition in the Harold B. Lee Library in conjunction with the annual conference of the Mormon History Association. (Provo, Utah, Friends of the Brigham Young University Library, 1984). Item 7, p. [10].
Used by permission of the authors.
BRIGHAM YOUNG UNIVERSITY