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Elder Holland has it right: “It is not our purpose ever to demean any person’s belief or the doctrine of any religion. We extend to all the same respect for their doctrine that we ask for ours.”

It is therefore a shame to have this statement appear a few sentences before: “We agree with our critics on at least that point—that such a formulation for divinity [an unflattering amalgam of the doctrine of the Trinity] is incomprehensible.”

It is also to be regretted that the full context of Serapion’s lament — “Woe is me! They have taken my God away from me, … and I know not whom to adore or to address” — is not given, either by Holland, Paulsen, or Robinson). The Anthropomorphite heresy Serapion clung to had its crux in the veneration of icons. As an iconoclastic religion, Mormonism would no doubt also have frowned on Serapion’s use of icons in prayer and sought to take them away.