* For the minutes of this High Council, see Times and Seasons,
Vol. V, pp. 647-655, 660-667.
When the High Council met, Young expressed a disbelief in Rigdon's reported illness. He said that, having heard that Rigdon had ordained men to be prophets, priests, and kings, he and Orson Hyde had obtained from Rigdon a confession that he had performed the act of ordination, and that he believed he held authority above any man in the church. That evening eight of the Twelve had visited him at his house, and, getting confirmation of his position, had sent a committee to him to demand his license. This he had refused to surrender, saying, "I did not receive it from you, neither shall I give it up to you." Then came the order for his trial.
Orson Hyde presented the case against Rigdon in detail. He declared that, when they demanded the surrender of his license, Rigdon threatened to turn traitor, "His own language was, 'Inasmuch as you have demanded my license, I shall feel it my duty to publish all your secret meetings, and all the history of the secret works of this church, in the public journals.'* He intimated that it would bring a mob upon us." Parley P. Pratt, the member of Rigdon's old church in Ohio, who, according to his own account, first called Rigdon's attention to the Mormon Bible, next spoke against his old friend.
* Lee thus explains one of these "secret works": "The same winter
(1843) he [Smith] organized what was called 'The Council of Fifty.'
This was a confidential organization. This Council was designated as a
lawmaking department, but no record was ever kept of its doings, or, if
kept, they were burned at the close of each meeting. Whenever anything
of importance was on foot, this Council was called to deliberate upon
it. The Council was called the 'Living Constitution.' Joseph said that
no legislature could enact laws that would meet every case, or attain
the ends of justice in all respells."—"Mormonism Unveiled," p.173.
After Amasa Lyman, John Taylor, and H. C. Kimball had spoken against Rigdon, Brigham Young took the floor again, and in reply to the threat that Rigdon would expose the secrets of the church, he denounced him in the following terms:—
"Brother Sidney says, if we go to opposing him, he will tell our secrets. But I would say, 'O, don't, brother Sidney! don't tell our secrets—O, don't!' But if he tells our secrets, we will tell his. Tit for tat. He has had long visions in Pittsburg, revealing to him wonderful iniquity among the Saints. Now, if he knows of so much iniquity, and has got such wonderful power, why don't he purge it out? He professes to have the keys of David. Wonderful power and revelations! And he will publish our iniquity. O, dear brother Sidney, don't publish our iniquity! Now don't! If Sidney Rigdon undertakes to publish all our secrets, as he says, he will lie the first jump he takes. If he knew of all our iniquity why did he not publish it sooner? If there is so much iniquity in the church as you talk of, Elder Rigdon, and you have known of it so long, you are a black-hearted wretch because you have not published it sooner. If there is not this iniquity, you are a blackhearted wretch for endeavoring to bring a mob upon us, to murder innocent men, women and children. Any man that says the Twelve are bogus-makers, or adulterers, or wicked men is a liar; and all who say such things shall have the fate of liars, where there is weeping and gnashing of teeth. Who is there who has seen us do such things? No man. The spirit that I am of tramples such slanderous wickedness under my feet." *
* William Small, in a letter to the Pittsburg Messenger and
Advocate, p. 70, relates that when he met Rigdon on his arrival at St.
Louis by boat after this trial, Orson Hyde, who was also a passenger
and thought Small was with the Twelve, addressed Small, asking him to
intercede with Rigdon not to publish the secret acts of the church,
and telling him that if Rigdon would come back and stand equal with the
Twelve and counsel with them, he would pledge himself, in behalf of the
Twelve, that all they had said against Rigdon would be revoked.
At this point the proceedings had a rather startling interruption. William Marks, president of the Stake at Nauvoo, and a member of the High Council (who, as we have seen, had rebelled against the doctrine of polygamy when it was presented to him) took the floor in Rigdon's defence. But it was in vain.
W. W. Phelps moved that Rigdon "be cut off from the church, and delivered over to the buffetings of Satan until he repents." The vote by the Council in favor of this motion was unanimous, but when it was offered to the church, some ten members voted against it. Phelps at once moved that all who had voted to follow Rigdon should be suspended until they could be tried by the High Council, and this was agreed to unanimously, with an amendment including the words, "or shall hereafter be found advocating his principles." After compelling President Marks, by formal motion, to acknowledge his satisfaction with the action of the church, the meeting adjourned.
Rigdon's next steps certainly gave substance to his brother's theory that his mind was unbalanced, the family having noticed his peculiarities from the time he was thrown from a horse, when a boy.* He soon returned to Pittsburg, Pennsylvania, where his first step was to "resuscitate" the Messenger and Advocate, which had died at Kirtland. In a signed article in the first number he showed that he then intended "to contend for the same doctrines, order of government, and discipline maintained by that paper when first published at Kirtland," in other words, to uphold the Mormon church as he had known it, with himself at its head. But his old desire for original leadership got the better of him, and after a conference of the membership he had gathered around him, held in Pittsburg in April, 1845, at which he was voted "First President, Prophet, Seer, Revelator, and Translator," he issued an address to the public in which he declared that his Church of Christ was neither a branch nor connection of the church at Nauvoo, and that it received members of the Church of Latter-Day Saints only after baptism and repentance.** In an article in his organ, on July 15, 1845, he made assertions like these: "The Church of Christ and the Mormons are so widely different in their respective beliefs that they are of necessity opposed to one another, as far as religion is concerned.... There is scarcely one point of similarity.... The Church of Christ has obtained a distinctive character."