Here we have two more examples where Oliver Cowdery corrected what he initially wrote in the printer’s manuscript. These corrections were probably made when he proofed 𝓟 against 𝓞, which is not extant for the book of Moroni. The level of ink flow for these two corrections is somewhat heavier, similar to the corrections made near the top of the same manuscript page of 𝓟 (see the discussions under Moroni 7:42 and Moroni 7:44).
For the first correction here in Moroni 8:5–6, we note that the text has 16 examples of concerning the followed by the gerund form of a verb; 11 of these have the gerund coming, all in reference to the coming of Christ (as in Mosiah 13:33: “did not Moses prophesy unto them concerning the coming of the Messiah”). The five other examples show considerable variety in the choice of the verb:
We also have one example of the gerund baptizing in the text (in addition to five cases where baptizing is used as a present participle):
Thus the initial reading in Moroni 8:5, “concerning the baptizing of your little children”, is quite possible. Of course, the noun baptism also exists, with 24 occurrences elsewhere in the original text. We also have clear evidence of Oliver Cowdery’s tendency to accidentally replace a noun with the gerund form of the verb that corresponds to the noun, as in the following case when Oliver momentarily replaced restoration with restoring in 𝓟:
In that instance, 𝓞 is extant and reads restoreation, not restoreing (the scribe there in 𝓞 is the unknown scribe 2 of 𝓞). Elsewhere the text has three more instances of “concerning the restoration” (in 1 Nephi 15:20, Alma 41:1, and Helaman 15:11) but none of “concerning the restoring”. Here in Moroni 8:5, both baptism and baptizing are theoretically possible; thus the change in 𝓟 to baptism is most likely a correction to the reading of 𝓞 rather than due to editing.
As far as the second correction here in Moroni 8:5–6 is concerned, the text has eight other examples of “to labor diligently” and six of “to labor exceedingly”. Again, either reading is theoretically possible, so we follow the corrected reading in 𝓟 (namely, diligently ) since it appears to represent the attempt on Oliver Cowdery’s part to make sure 𝓟 followed the reading in 𝓞, no longer extant here.
Summary: Accept in Moroni 8:5–6 Oliver Cowdery’s two corrections in 𝓟 since they both represent, it would appear, the result of proofing against 𝓞; in both cases, either the initial or the corrected reading will work in theory, so there would have been no motivation for editing the text.