# Title: Editorial (reply to Times and Seasons and Nauvoo Neighbor), Messenger and Advocate (Pittsburgh) I:1
# Date: 1844-10-15
# Source: http://www.sidneyrigdon.com/RigWrit/M&A/MA-1844.htm | Provenance: unsigned editorial; Rigdon was editor and the first-person content (his Nauvoo visit) marks it as his. Medium-high confidence. Appended Newton certificate removed.

The "Times and Seasons," and the "Nauvoo Neighbor," published at Nauvoo, Illinois, are busying themselves about us
exceedingly, though the editor says he reluctantly obtrudes our name before the public. Now if he would be as
reluctant to publish falsehoods about us when he does obtrude our name upon the public, it would be as creditable
to him.... We wrote a letter which was
published in the People's Organ, at St. Louis, Mo., stating facts and nothing else but facts, in relation to what took
place on our visit at Nauvoo a few weeks since; and the editor and
Mr. Hyde , who have both written on the
subject, knew this as well as we, and they know it now; but by giving publicity to an ignorant farce which came off
in Nauvoo, they thought to impeach our character, but in this weak and ignorant attempt they will fail.

What is the matter of complaint? It is this: We said that the only crime we committed was, that there were a number
of gentlemen who wished to return with us to Pittsburgh. This they said was false, and to prove it, publish an
investigation said to have been had in Nauvoo, when we were charged with trying to divide the church. Now, how were
we dividing the church? The only ground of this charge was that a number of persons were desirous of returning with
us to Pittsburgh, and these defamers knew it. It is this they call dividing the church, and then say they opposed us
for dividing the church, and not because that there were those who desired to go with us to Pittsburgh. Now reader,
judge of the character of this attempt, and of the character of those who could condescend to it. I here leave them
to enjoy all the pleasure their situation can give -- they are welcome to it.

But there was another and greater cause for their (the Twelve) opposition to us than the crime of having those at
Nauvoo whose personal friendship made them desire to be where they could enjoy our society. Gentle reader, do you
desire to know what it was? Well, it is your right, as well as the right of saint and sinner to know it. Know then,
that the so called Twelve apostles at Nauvoo, are now teaching the doctrine of, what is called
Spiritual Wives; that a man may have more wives than one, and they are mot only teaching it but practising it ,
and this doctrine is spreading alarmingly through that apostate branch of the church of Latter Day Saints. Their
greatest objection to us was our opposition to this doctrine, knowing, as they did, that we had got the fact in
possession; it created alarm, great alarm; every effort was used while we were there to effect something that might
screen them from the consequences of exposure. This is what Mr. Hyde had allusion to on the steam boat at St. Louis,
when he felt such an interest in our welfare,
as he said , as to request
us not for his sake or his fellow apostles sake, but for our own sake and salvation, to make any disclosures, lest
we should have to retract and thereby be injured. Kind man! how fatherly and apostolical this!

I now call upon the twelve, including Mr. J. E. Page, to deny the existence of such a doctrine among them, believed,
taught and practised by them. This is the doctrine which has made what these men call the division in the church. We
deny it has made any division in the Church. The Church is taking Paul's advice, "From such turn away;"
the Church is doing so. See the third chapter of Second Timothy, where this as well as other crimes are declared an
apostacy, and the saints admonished to turn away from them. This the saints are doing, and that in great numbers too,
and the separation will continue until all the saints are again found united in strict obedience to the Doctrine and
Covenants of the Church.

This doctrine of a man having more wives than one, is the cause which has induced the twelve to put at defiance the
ecclesiastical arrangements of the Church, and what is equally criminal, to do despite unto the moral excellence of
the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church, setting up an order of things of their own in violation of all the rules
and regulations known to the saints, and nowhere found in the Doctrines and Covenants of the Church, but by the
authority of pretended secret communications made to themselves in the Secret Chambers, unknown to the Church only
as they and some of their followers declare them, and these pretended secret communications, in direct contradiction
to the written word contained in the Doctrine and Covenants of the Church.

These matters the saints are now investigating, and not only in Nauvoo but in other places to avoid these investigations,
the twelve are getting up sham trials to stop the mouths of those who are determined to expose the corruptions of
these transgressors. Let the saints look well to it. The time has come when the saints will have to come out and show
themselves: the alternative with the saints is that they must either deny their faith or espouse the Spiritual Wife
system and be taught by those who practice it, or else boldly and manfully join with those who have and are raising
their voices against this most extraordinary of all doctrines, which is destroying the peace and sapping the foundation
of the Church.

To satisfy the public that it was the Spiritual Wife system that caused our opponents at Nauvoo to oppose us, we
give the following certificate, from a gentleman whose character stands too high for truth and veracity to be
impeached by any man:

[quoted certificate of Joseph H. Newton omitted -- not Rigdon's words]
