B.H. Roberts repudiates The Seer
ROBERTS, B[righam]. H[enry]. (1857-1833, sustained as one of the First Seven Presidents of the Seventy, 1888). RECENT DISCUSSION OF MORMON AFFAIRS. Answer to the Ministerial Association's Review of "An Address to the World" by the First Presidency of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints. By Elder B. H. Roberts, 1907 [cover title; Salt Lake City? No publisher given].
23 cm. (= 9 inches tall). 56 pages, collated COMPLETE. Original printed pale green wrappers, color fading. Some wear and creasing to wrappers & backstrip; one internal blank page corner replaced with matching paper. Several lesser, discrete repairs without loss of paper or text. An "OK," but not exciting copy.
SOLD::postpaid: $75::
FIRST EDITION, Flake 7366.
IN
RESPONSE to the First Presidency's Address . . . to the World, 1907,
a Utah association of Protestant ministers issued a unanimous indignant statement
through the Salt Lake Tribune, referring to various controversial doctrines
which they said Mormons taught and believed, but did not share with the world
abroad.
In order to defend the Church, Elder Roberts wrote this pamphlet, and in the process, had to highlight earlier Church repudiation of Orson Pratt's still-popular work, THE SEER. Going considerably further, however, Roberts also insisted that LDS apostles can make doctrinal errors. The language used, in fact, tends almost to suggest that errors may occur more often than not. This may surprise us today, and perhaps explains why no official publisher's imprint appears on this unusual pamphlet! Here are highlights of this interesting section . . .
I find in this [anti-Mormon ministerial association] review ten lengthy quotations from the Seer which was published by Orson Pratt, yet the Seer by formal action of the first presidency and twelve apostles of the Church was repudiated, and Elder Orson Pratt himself sanctioned the repudiation. There was a long article published in the Deseret News on the 23rd of August, 1865, over the signatures of the first presidency and twelve setting forth that this work—the Seer—together with some other writings of Elder Pratt, were inaccurate. . .
And yet these [Protestant] gentlemen, our reviewers, who, of course, we must believe, since they are ministers of the gospel, and hence they are ministers of the truth and believe in fair dealing, make ten long quotations from a repudiated work, and one quotation only from . . . the Doctrine and Covenants! [p. 3]
"Well," says one, "do you propose to repudiate the works of men holding your priesthood, and who are supposed to speak and act under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit? Do you not destroy the effectiveness of your Church ministry when you take this attitude?" Not at all. We merely make what is a proper distinction. It would be a glorious thing for a man to so live that his life would touch the very life and Spirit of God, so that his spirit would blend with God's Spirit, under which circumstances there would be no error to his life or utterances at all. That is a splendid thing to contemplate, but when you take into account human weakness, imperfection, prejudice, passion, bias, it is too much to hope for human nature that man will constantly thus walk linked with God. And so we make this distinction between a man speaking sometimes under the influence of prejudice and pre-conceived notions, and the utterances of a man who, in behalf of the Church of God, and having the requisite authority, and holding the requisite position, may, upon occasion, lay aside all prejudice, all pre-conception, and stand ready and anxious to receive the divine impression of God's Spirit that shall plead, "Father, thy will and thy word be made known now to thy people through the channel thou hast appointed." There is a wide difference between men coming with the word of God thus obtained, and their ordinary speech every day and on all kinds of occasions. [p. 4 (emphasis added)]
You Protestant gentlemen repudiate several books called Apocrypha which the Catholic church accepts as of equal authority with the rest of the books of the New Testament. And so I say in this procedure of ours, in refusing to accept only that which time and the inspiration of God shall demonstrate to be absolutely true, we are but following the example of the ancient Church of Christ. [5]
B. H. ROBERTS was one of the most powerful Mormon theologians and defenders of the twentieth century, and he spares no efforts to perform well in this pamphlet. Some of his comments, of course, go beyond what one might anticipate today. On sexual relations among the Gods . . .
There seems to be objection in the review to the idea of the marriage relation existing in heaven and subsisting between divine beings. Loud complaint is made, if you hold that the intelligences of heaven obey the law of marriage. Let me ask you, Christian gentlemen, Who instituted marriage? You will answer, God. Is it holy or unholy? . . . Is it not just as good for divine personages as for you imperfect men? Can it be that your ideas of the relationship of the sexes are so impure that you must needs regard that association as so unholy as to be unworthy of divine beings? [p. 19]
. . . . .
. . . And that which sanctifies man here in this world may be trusted not to degrade him in the eternities that are to come, but, on the contrary, will contribute to his exaltation and his glory. That is our faith, at least, and we would not change it for all the sexless, hermaphrodite existences that your warped minds paint in such glowing colors. [p. 20]
THIS PAMPHLET
addresses most of the colorful issues of Mormon doctrinal controversy, from
plurality of Gods to Joseph F. Smith's cohabitation with plural wives after
the Manifesto — even the rights of twentieth-century Mormons to believe
in polygamy . . .
