A true excerpt from
The Western Examiner
St. Louis, Missouri, 1836:

Messrs. Editors: I was once a believer in the existence of a Being such as Christians call God, and was loud in proclaiming my belief, – calling on those who did not believe as I did, to prove there was no God. I am now a proselyte to the sect of Soofis, who believe that the Giver of all Good, the Creator of the Universe, is a Spider; and I now call upon Christian theologians to prove me wrong – to prove that God is not an incomprehensible, omnipotent great Spider – that the Universe is not his web, and that all things are not, eventually, to be drawn within the divine body. – Until they can prove all this, they must admit that Soofism is, at least, as rational a belief as any other kind of Godism extant. – Tela

-----

*N.B. Words imported from languages that do not use the Roman alphabet tend to shift around in our spelling. Soofi is the word we spell today as Sufi.

Note: The full, grandiloquent name of the Western Examiner is: The Western Examiner, A journal embodying a full and impartial enquiry into the truth or falsity of the Christian religion; whether philosophically or historically viewed. The actual typography is – interesting, in the manner of the 19th century.