Saturday, July 10, 2021

“Remarkable Fulfilment of an Awful Imprecation" (Millennial Star, April 1841)

  

REMARKABLE FULFILMENT OF AN AWFUL IMPRECATION

 

In the month of February or March, 1835, Mr. Francis G. Bishop, a minister in the church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints, came into the town of Oxford, New Haven County, and State of Connecticut, to preach the gospel. He delivered once discourse in the Methodist Chapel, Zoar Bridge. Mr. Asahel Mead, a member of the Methodist Episcopal Church, attended Mr. Bishop’s meeting, and at the close thereof (having heard some things advanced by Mr. B., contrary and repugnant to his own views) said to some of his friends, that when Mr. Bishop returned to preach there two weeks from that day, he (Mr. Mead), would go at the head of a mob to mob Mr. Bishop. He then said that if Mr. Bishop was right in his views and doctrine, he hoped that he should be taken away before the two weeks came around; if he was not, he would surely go at the head of a mob to mob Mr. B. So confident did he seem to be that he was right, and Mr. B. was wrong, that he repeated his request to be taken out of the way if Mr. B. was right. He emphatically requested the whole company to remember what he said. He indulged in abusing and slandering the Latter-day Saints very much—His conduct ill comported with the character of a Christian.

 

He was taken ill in a day or two, became deranged, and the very day that he proposed to head a mob, he headed a funeral procession and was carried to his grave, a cold and lifeless corpse.

 

Having been eye and ear witnesses to the facts above stated, we cheerfully give our names to the world, in testimony of the same, by the request of Mr. Hyde.

 

BURR TOMLINSON,

CAROLINE TOMLINSON.

 

Oxford, New-Haven County,

Conn., Jan. 20th, 1841.

 

(Burr Tomlinson and Caroline Tomlinson, “Remarkable Fulfilment of an Awful Imprecation,” The Latter-day Saints; Millennial Star 1, no 12 [April, 1841]: 301)