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Show Page 183 and strained through dim exegetical formulae by men who deny even the possibility of inspiration. In vain he searches the Bible for any justification of modern sectarian practices: "Again, what part of the Bible has established the salaries of the different officers of the church?... The New Testament does not tell us the amount of wages religious hirelings should have, therefore, if it be important to know, the Bible is an insufficient guide." 4 Nor does he spare Catholic appeals to "tradition" in helping overcome the deficiencies and silences of the Bible - Catholicism is a dilute and directionless system, denying, as Tertullian does, even scripture as a positive standard, "since these afford either no decision, or, at most, only a doubtful one." Orson also finds it curious that the popes, who presumably succeed to St. Peter in the apostolic chair, do not profess to succeed him in his canonical character of "revelator." In nearly a hundred pages, Orson details a matrix of defense for the Book of Mormon which remains definitive in the Church today. After establishing the authenticity of its claims - by material and prophetic witnesses - he asserts its indispensability as the only available control. "Every point of Christ's doctrine should be again revealed in such plain, definite, and positive language, that no two persons could possibly disagree upon it." He demands that the book be given a serious test, "a rigid examination," and, if it be found an imposition, "it should be extensively published to the world as such...exposed and silenced, not by physical force, neither by persecutions, bare assertions, nor ridicule, but by strong arguments...by evidences adduced from scripture and reason." In favor of its genuineness, Orson Pratt offers one of his few claims to a personal transcendent experience: "The Book of Mormon is a divine revelation, for the voice of the Lord hath declared it unto me." Presumably |