Vilate believed the dissenters were wrong to turn away from the Saints, yet she felt sorrow for them rather than anger. “After all that I have said about this dissenting party,” she wrote Heber, “there are some of them that I love, and I have great feeling and pity for them.”48 She knew the collapse of the Safety Society had tried them spiritually and temporally. She too thought that Joseph had made mistakes while managing the institution, but she had not lost faith in the prophet.
