to imposture its formal character,—that specious appearance by which it is able to deceive. Fanaticism looks through a dense medium of prejudice and passion, and confounds the distorted image of truth with truth itself; and totally miscarries in the attempt to embody the speculative truth in a practical and tangible system. The fundamental postulate, for example, of the Fifth-Monarchy men in the 17th century, that God is the true Governor of nations, and the best administration is that which most perfectly conforms with the Divine will, is one of the most unquestionable and sublime truths ever enunciated. But no sooner did they attempt to apply this doctrine to actual life, and to realize the abstract idea in some concrete form, than the grossest fanaticism disclosed itself. The State must be entirely merged into the Church, the magistracy destroyed, the validity of human laws denied; and wholly mistaking the nature of spiritual liberty, they made it to consist in the possession of an inward spirit, wholly irresponsible to civil tribunals. The climax of fanaticism was reached, when they assumed to be the vicegerents of the Deity, and mistook their own lawless desires for “the inspiration of the Almighty.”
The doctrine of a Theocracy is nothing new in the history of opinions. Indeed, the Mormons claim to stand in the same relations to God, as the Israelites under Moses. The civil jurisdiction is in the hands of church officers, from the inferior justice of the peace up to the governor.—The Justice is a bishop of a ward in a city, or of a precinct in the country; the Judges on the bench are constituted from the High-Priests, from the Seventies, or from the Apostolic college; and the highest functionary of the State is the President of the Church, who rules by virtue of his prophetic functions as the seer of the Lord.[1] It is the revival of theocracy in our country which excites the wonder of the curious. And who can say, but it may be the reaction of mind against the avowed and boasted atheism of our own government? In the effort to put an eternil divorce between church and state, we seem to have fallen upon the other extreme. ‘There is in our constitution a studied silence as to the providence and government
- ↑ Gunnison’s History of the Mormons, pp. 24, 25.
