Nephi's vision gives us a poor account of the corruptions of the Roman church, showing that the author understood very little of church History. The name of Jesus Christ is mentioned on page 28, and of John, the apostle, page 35. Nephi's vision takes up about ten pages, from page 25, and gives, as his own views, a cursory account of the popular doctrines which have been agitated since the Reformation. To give credit to the pretence, that Nephi, living six hundred years before the christian era, could, or would, have had the name of Jesus and of John revealed. in preference to any other prophet, is repugnant to common sense, and in direct violence to the universal belief of those who have ever been distinguished for piety, and a critical knowledge of the holy Bible. Besides, we cannot reconcile a view of revealed truth, with a disquisition on Church scisms, such as we find in Nephi's vision. If the Book of Mormon is a revealed truth from God, we are compelled, irresistably, to conclude, that Paul was mistaken when he said the twelve apostles of the Lamb, developed certain secrets which were hid from ages and generations, and were ordained before the world to their glory, that they should have the honor of announcing them. But our author pretends that Nephi, together with sundry other prophets which he has created, had the whole christian system developed to them, many centuries before the twelve apostles, of which Paul speaks, had the honor of announcing it, and preached it to a set of Jews, who had been miraculously landed on, or near the Isthmus of Darien. Not only this, if we are to take the brass plate revelation for sacred truth, we must infer that there has been a great deficiency in the record of our Savior's mission, or that he did not exhibit his truths while here, as fully, and as clearly as he did to these Nephites, through their prophets; and consequently left the world in darkness, to grope their way in superstition and ignorance, until the mineral-rod
