One of the first converts to the LDS church, Parley Parker Pratt (1807-57) would eventually become early Mormonism's most famous and widely published defender. Born in western New York, he converted to Mormonism in late 1830 and was called to the Quorum of Twelve Apostles five years later as one of its founding members. He was strong-willed and largely self-educated, as his vitae reflects: he served several missions for the church; participated in Zion's Camp, the militia which marched to Missouri to rescue threatened church members; quarreled with Joseph Smith over finances and narrowly escaped excommunication; founded the Latter-day Saints' Millennial Starin England; married several plural wives in Nauvoo, Illinois; immigrated to the Great Salt Lake valley; and continued to fill additional overseas missions. Best known for his fiery apologetic writings such as A Voice of Warning (1837), Key to the Science of Theology (1855), and for his autobiography which was published posthumously in 1874 by his son, who wrote most of it, Pratt nevertheless defined Mormon doctrine and theology for much of the nineteenth century. He was killed in 1857 in Arkansas by the estranged husband of one of his polygamous wives. The husband, an outsider, did not share Pratt's and other Mormons' contempt for civil authority over marriage.

Excerpt from Plain Facts, Shewing the Falsehood and Folly of the Mormonites, or Latter-Day Saints: Being an Exposition of the Imposture, and a Proof of the Wickedness and Impiety of Following or Hearing Them; Because They Have Not God's Word as the Only Standard of Their Faith, but Mix Up With It a Foolish and Inconsistent Romance There have also come to us two or three other false teachers, one professing to come from America, but whose tongue tells more of Lancashire or Cheshire, than of that Continent who can hardly read the book he pretends to expound, and who denies that the Bible is the whole truth Of God. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.