1870-03-04-New York Tribune-Certain persons living on Long Island

Certain persons living on Long Island

New York Tribune, 4 March 1870, p. 5

Certain persons living on Long Island see fit to attend Mormon meetings, and are even reported as having joined, or as intent on joining, the Mormon organization. Their notions differ widely from ours, and we must believe that if better informed, they would act differently. This, however, does not excuse those who break up Mormon meetings by violence, whether actual or merely threatened. These should be legally dealt with as disturbers of religious meetings and trespassers on others' rights. They have no more right to break up a Mormon than a Baptist, Methodist, Unitarian, or Roman Catholic meeting; and they can only disturb any meeting by assuming ground that would justify the persecutions of Paganism or of the Spanish Inquisition. To say that "This is no true religion, but a devilish imposture," is to assume a right to judge what religions are true and what false, which you have no business to do. No one has ever yet claimed the right to persecute a true religion: all persecutions assume that the faith proscribed is false and pernicious. But we will refrain from dealing out such manifest truisms, and simply remind the official guardians of peace and order on Long Island that they cannot overlook the outrages in question without a shameful neglect of duty.