Now if any person has represented anything other wise than what we now write he or she is a liar and has represented us falsely and this is another manner of evil which is spoken against us falsely.

We have learned also since we have been prisoners that many <​false​> and pernicious things which were calculated to lead the saints far astray and to do them great injury as coming from the , taught by , and we have reason to fear that many other designing and corrupt characters like unto himself, which the Presidency never knew of being taught in the by anybody untill after they were made prisoners, which if they had known of, they would have spurned them and their authors from them as they would the very gates of hell.

Thus we find there have been frauds and secret abominations and evil works going on, leading the minds of the weak and unwary into confusion and distraction, and pawning it all the while upon the Presidency, while mean time the Presidency were ignorant as well as innocent of those things which were practicing in the Church in their name, and were attending to their own Secular and family concerns, weighed down with sorrow, in debt, in poverty, in hunger assaying to be fed, yet finding themselves receiving deeds of charity, but inadequate to their subsistence and because they we received those deeds we were envied and hated by those who professed to be our friends.

But notwithstanding we thus speak, we honor the church when we speak of the Church, as a Church, for their liberality, kindness, patience and long suffering, and their continual kindness towards us. And now brethren we say unto you, what more can we enumerate? is not all manner of evil of every description spoken of us falsely, yea we say unto you falsely, we have been misrepresented and misunderstood and belied and the purity and integrity of and uprightness of our hearts have not been known, and it is through ignorance, yea the very depth of ignorance is the cause, an of it, and not only ignorance but on the part of some gross wickedness and hypocracy also, who by a long face and sanctimonious prayers and very pious sermons had power to lead the minds of the ignorant and unwary and thereby obtain such influence that when we approached their [p. 106]