The Mormonites.--A Preacher of this sect visited us last Saturday. ... --A young man about 23 years of age, somewhere in Ontario county, N.Y. was visited by an angel! (here the preacher looked around him apparently to see if the credulity of the people in this enlightened age, could be thus imposed on) who informed him three times in one night by visiting a certain place in that town he would have revealed to him something of importance. The young man was disturbed, but did not obey the summons until the following day, when the angel again visited him. At the place appointed he found in the earth a box which contained a set of thin plates resembling gold, with Arabic characters inscribed on them. The plates were minutely described as being connected with rings in the shape of the letter D, which facilitated the opening and shutting of the book. The preacher said he found in the same place two stones with which he was enabled by placing them over his eyes and putting his head in a dark corner to decypher the hieroglyphics on the plates!--This we were told was performed to admiration, and now, as the result, we have a book which the speaker informed us was the Mormon Bible--a book second to no other--without the holy Bible, he seemed to think, would be of little use. . . .
[Illinois Patriot (Jacksonville), 16 September 1831, as reprinted in New Hampshire Miscellany, 11 October 1831. Also reprinted in New Hampshire Gazette, 25 October 1831 (Quinn 1987, 146), and Independent Volunteer (Montrose, Pennsylvania), 11 November 1831., as cited in Dan Vogel, Early Mormon Documents: Illinois Patriot]
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