If we credit these witnesses, there is one thing that is clearly established, namely, Smith was not responsible for the language of the Book of Mormon. No more so than a babe of today. Smith would look at the characters on the plates and the English of each would appear and would not leave till it was correctly written. Therefore, if sentences were awkwardly expressed, grammatically incorrect, contained useless verbiage, unnecessary repetitions or errors of any kind, none but the inspiration that guided the seer is to blame! The inspiration of heaven is infallibly correct in all that it does. It would not, hence palm off on any people a translation that was not infallibly correct. None could give an infallibly correct translation unless governed by the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
One thing that we now ask, and ask it in behalf of truth, and that is: How was it that thousands of sentences appeared to Smith from our Bible, and appeared in the precise language of the King James tranlation? One of two positions must here be taken, namely: The King James' translation is infallibly correct, the translators thereof being governed by the inspiration of heaven, or the Book of Mormon is a fraud.
The witnesses that we have introduced certify that the Book of Mormon was translated from the plates that were shown to Smith by the angel, and such is the claim of all Mormons; but the witnesses testify that the English of that book is the language that appeared to Smith through magical spectacles or the kidney shaped stone. Why is it that the inspiration that guided Smith and worked so magically through his Urim and Thummim was, in the translation of sentences that had been copied from our Bible, limited to the language of the Common Version? Did the angel that guided Smith have to depend upon the king's translators for his English? Of course, I suppose Joe's angel was "a pore, ignernt, unlarnt criter." Of course. Mormon inspiration will never tell us how it was that Smith's angel translated the passages that had been copied from the Jewish scripture in the precise language of the
