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Show Page 96 For five months he remained officially an excommunicate. While the war of affidavits went on, he watched and listened to the propaganda offensive mounted by Bennett - a cause the newspapers anticipated the Pratts would now embrace. As his reason cooled, he began to see that Bennett was the authentic villain in this sorry scandal, the "Doctor" by now having sworn to "drink the heart's blood" of those who had ex- 41 pelled him from Nauvoo. To those who allied the Pratts in the publ 1C mind with Bennett's campaign, Orson replied through the October 1 issue of a local newspaper, The Wasp: "Dear Sir: I noticed in the last week's Wasp... that Dr. J.C. Bennett had declared...that he had received a letter from me and from my wife, and that we were preparing to leave and expose Mormonism. I wish, through the medium of your paper, to say to the public, that said statements are entirely false. We have never, at any time, written any letter or letters to Dr. J.C. Bennett, on any subject whatever. Neither are we 'preparing to leave and expose Mormonism:' but intend to make NAUVOO OUR RESIDENCE, AND MORMONISM OUR MOTTO." 42 In another letter to the same newspaper, he protests his continued faith in Latter-day Saint doctrine and gives his reasons: "Neither have I renounced the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints, but believe that its doctrine, which has been extensively in both America and Europe, is pure and according to the scriptures of eternal truth...there is something in it which seems to whisper that 'God is there.'...The lustre of truth cannot be dimmed by the shadows of error and falsehood. Neither will the petty difficulties existing among its votaries weaken its influence or destroy its power." 43 While continuing to offer his "regular course of instruction" through the university and entertaining the Nauvoo Lyceum in his home, he quietly contemplated what to do about his own "petty difficulties" - his answer came in the form of a letter from Bennett that arrived addressed to himself and Sidney Rigdon. Rigdon had suffered similar shocks over "disclosures" about his |