1844-07-06-Declaration of Independance
Declaration of Independance, of God's People; A Parody
The Prophet v1n8 06 July 1844, pg 2
When in the course of the providence of God, an angel appears to man to reveal a new dispensation, and it becomes necessary for the "Saints of God" to dissolve the connection which has bound them to the superstitions and vain traditions of their fathers, and to assume their position in the kingdom of God, which the celestial law and the law of liberty entitle them, a decent respect to public opinion requires that they should declare the cause which impels them to the seperation. We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are by nature aliens to the commonwealth of God, that the same cause will produce the same effects, that God is the same in all ages, that Jesus Christ is the same, and the office, work, and power of the Holy Ghost is the same in all ages of the world.�That to secure the blessings and gifts of God to man, the gospel of Jesus Christ was revealed, deriving its power from the hands of God, and flowing through a regular appointed priesthood after the order of Melchezideck.
That whenever any form of religion becomes destructive of these means, it is the right of God to abolish it and institute the true religion, laying its foundations on apostles, prophets, evangelists, teachers, and gifts of healing, &c.�Prudence indeed will dictate that a religion long established, should not be changed for light and transcient causes, and accordingly, all experience hath shown that God's people are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by withdrawing from old associations and traditions. But when a long train of abuses pursuing invariably the same object, evinces a desire to subject them to the errors of priestcraft, and reduce them under absolute mental despotism, it is their right, it is their duty to withdraw from such sects, and to receive for themselves the revelations of God, by obedience to the gospel of Jesus Christ.Such has been the patient suffering of God's people, and such is now the necessity which impels us to come out of Babylon:�the history of priestcraft is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the annihilation of the "faith once delivered to the Saints;" to prove this, let facts be submitted to a candid world.
They have refused the use of their halls, churches, and also their school houses, to the authorised servants of God.
They have treated us as "the offscourings of the earth."
They have treated us with haughty disdain and abuse, not descending to associate with us, except to beg our monies, which they have expended for costly attire and splendid equipage.
They have endeavored to deprive us of the right of believing the evidences of our own senses; and have recommended fines and imprisonments as the best argument to convince those who oppose their impostures.
They have collected together large bodies of women and children, at places uncomfortable, unusual, and distant from their homes, for the sole purpose of fatiguing and frightening them at their dis-tracted meetings into a belief of their "cunningly devised fables."
They have invited us to their temples of pride and avarice, that they might foully slander and abuse us while there.
They have denounced with spiteful malignity, some of the most honest men, because they would not acknowledge their usurped authority as the servants of the Lord.
They have frequently brought the wrath of mobs upon us, for opposing with manly firmness, their invasion of our rights.
They have continued, notwithstanding opposition, to extort from our laboring poor, large sums of money to support their pious splendor; the people being scared out of that money which should have bought bread for their starving children.
They have endeavored to prevent the spread of truth, by refusing to let their hearers attend the lectures given by the servants of God; knowing as they do, that they dare not meet us on fair and honorable grounds, so they creep up in the dark and stab their enemy.
They have obstructed the administration of justice, by screening their clerical offenders from the penalties of the laws.
They have tried to ruin us in our price avocations, by traducing our characters.
They have heaped together innumerable swarms of teachers, and sent them all over the world, teaching lies for hire and divining for money, and breaking the first commandment of God.
They have attempted to render their influence subversive of the liberties of the people.
They have combined together to subject us to their jurisdiction, that by having their mark we might buy sell, and get gain.
For quartering large numbers of proud and world-wise ecclesiastics among us.
For protecting them from punishment for the most horrid crimes.
For extorting money from us against our inclinations.
For depriving us in many cases of the means of enlightening our minds.
For opposing a liberal miscellaneous education among our children, and establishing instead, innumerable Sunday schools, the object of which, is to poison the tender minds of our children with sectarian superstitions and traditions, and to hold the young mind in ignorant awe and mental darkness; thereby making them fit dupes, and accessary to all their seditious schemes, &c.
For persuading our children to their bigot factories, alias, Sunday schools, by strategem, and then given them their silly nonsense called tracts.
For denying us the right of rising up and vindicating ourselves when slandered and traduced in their temples of folly.
For striving to rob us of our thinking privileges; declaring themselves vested with the power, in all cases, of thinking for us;
They have waged a war of extermination against us.
They have drained our pockets�burnt and mutilated our publications,�and blockaded our channels of information.
They are at this time transporting large armies of lazy marauding missionaries, to complete the work of insanity, desolation, tyranny, and adultery, already commenced with circumstances of cruelty and perfidy, scarcely paralelled in the most barbarous ages, and entirely unworthy the leaders of civilized societies.
They have constrained many to fall in with their idolatry, and to become the unwilling persecutors of their own friends and brethren.
They have turned lose upon defenceless women, their unprincipled journeymen soul-savers, whose known rule of practice is, an undistinguished violation of all social harmony.
In every stage of these oppressions we have entreated them to desist; our repeated complaints have met only with repeated acts of oppression:�a priestcraft whose characters are thus marked by every act which may define seditious tyrants, are unfit to be the teachers of a free people.
Nor have we been indecorous or illiberal in our conduct towards our Sectarian friends. We have warned them from time to ime, of attempts by their Clergy to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the spirit of our Constitution; we have appealed to their republican justice and magnanimity; and we have reminded them of the persecution of our Pilgrim Fathers and of their solemn landing in the wilderness of Plymouth. We have called to their recollection the days of the Blue Laws, when innocent men and women were hung for the supposed crime of Witchcraft; and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred, to dissavow these usurpations which would inevitably interrupt our friendship and correspondence. They, too, have been deaf to the voice of justice and consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity which causes our seperation, and hold them as we do all other tyrants, enemie sot religion, truth, virture, happiness and republicanism.
We, therefore, the Saints, in gospel principles united, appealing to a God for the authority we are exercising, solemnly publish and declare, that we, the said people of God, are, and of right ought to be, free and independant, and that we are absolved from all allegiance to the Sectarian clergy, and that all religious connection between us and the said clergy, is, and of right ought to be totally dissolved; and that as free and independant men, we have a right to worship God according to the dictates of our conscience and do all other things which independant men may of right do." And for the support of this declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other, our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor.
