AND BY HIM INTENDED TO HAVE BEEN PUBLISHED AS A ROMANCL. BY E. D. HOWE. PAINESVILLE: PRINTED AND PUBLISHED BY THE AUTHOR, 1840. ADVERTISEMENT. THE following work was undertaken with reluctance, at the earnest solicitation of a great number of friends, who had, with the author, long looked upon the subject of which it treats, with mingled feelings of abhorence and pity-the Impostors and their victims of delusion, were viewed through these two different media. The truth, and the whole truth, have been his constant aim: But the difficulty of procuring, or arriving at the whole truth, in relation to a religious imposition, which has from its birth been so studiously vailed in secrecy, and generally under a belief that the judgments of God would follow any disclosures of what its votaries had seen or heard-will be readily discovered. He fears, therefore, that the half is yet untold. He has, in all his enquiries, endeavored to pay the most rigid regard to all the ordinary methods of eliciting truth, from every source within his reach. If he shall have failed in his desires and exertions, in any important particular, it will be a matter of regret. That his statements should fully escape censure or contradiction, by a sect whose foundation was falsehood, and which has been built up of the same material, is more than he can expect. He is fully persuaded, nevertheless, that sufficient, and more than sufficient, has been developed by unimpeachable testimony, to satisfy every rational person, whose mind has not already been prostrated by the machinations of the Impostors, that the Supreme Being has had as little agency in the prosperity of Mormonism, as in the grossest works of Satan. E. D. H. Painesville, (Ohio,) October, 1834. |