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[–]Jesus 5 insightful - 3 fun5 insightful - 2 fun6 insightful - 3 fun -  (0 children)

Part 4


The charges made against it, that it was a political organization, and that one of its designs was to undermine the Christian religion, although strenuously maintained by Barruel, Robison, and a host of other adversaries, have no foundation in truth. The principles of the order were liberal and philosophical, but neither revolutionary nor anti-Christian.

As the defender of free thought, it came of course into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church and the Company of Jesus, whose tendencies were altogether the other way. The priests, therefore, became its most active enemies, and their opposition was so successful that it was suppressed in 1 784.

There was also between Illuminism and the many Masonic Rites, which about the period of its popularity were constantly arising in Germany and in France, a species of rivalry. With the natural egotism of reformers, the Illuminati sought to prove the superiority of their own system to that of their rivals.

With this view they proclaimed that all the Lodges of Freemasons were secretly controlled by the Jesuits ; that their laws and their mysteries were the inventions of the same Order, of whom every Freemason was unconsciously the slave and the instrument. Hence they concluded that he who desired to possess the genuine 19 mysteries of Masonry must seek them not among the degrees of Rose Croix or the Scottish Knights, or still less among the English Masons and the disciples of the Rite of Strict Observance in Germany, but only in the Eclectic Lodges that had been instituted by the Illuminati.

Such, says Barruel, was the doctrine of the Illuminati, advanced for the purpose of elevating the character and aims of their own institution. The French abbd is not generally trustworthy on any subject connected with Freemasonry, of which he was the avowed and implacable foe, but we must acknowledge that he was not far from wrong in calling this story of Jesuitic Masonry “a ridiculous and contemptible fable.”

For once we are disposed to agree with him, when he says in his fervent declamation, “ If prejudice did not sometimes destroy the faculty of reasoning, we should be astonished that the Freemasons could permit themselves to be ensnared in so clumsy a trap. What is it, in fact, but to say to the Mother Lodge of Edinburgh, to the Grand Lodges of London and York, to their rulers, and to all their Grand Masters: ‘You thought that you held the reins of the Masonic world, and you looked upon yourselves as the great depository of its secrets, the distributers of its diplomas ; but you are not so, and, without even knowing it, are merely puppets of which the Jesuits hold the leading-strings, and which they move at their pleasure .’” 1

I think that with a little trouble we may be able to solve this apparently difficult problem of the Jesuitical interference with Freemasonry.

The Jesuits appear to have taken the priests of Egypt for their model. Like them, they sought to be the conservators and the interpreters of religion. The vows which they took attached them to their Order with bonds as indissoluble as those that .united the Egyptian priests in the sacred college of Memphis. Those who sought admission into their company were compelled to pass through trials of their fortitude and fidelity. Their ambition was as indomitable as their cunning was astute. They strove to be the confessors and the counselors of kings, and to control the education of youth, that by these means they might become of importance in the state, and direct the policy of every government where they

were admitted. And this policy was on all occasions to be made subservient to the interests of the church.

At one time they had not less than an hundred schools or colleges in France, the most important being that of Clermont, which, though at one time suppressed, had received renewed letters patent from Louis XIV.

It was this College of Clermont, where James II. was a frequent guest, led there by his religious feelings, that is said to have been the seat of that conspiracy of the Stuart faction which was to terminate either in the invention or the adoption of Freemasonry as a means of restoring the monarch to his throne, and of resuscitating the Roman Catholic religion in heretical England.

Now we may readily admit that the Jesuits were exceedingly anxious to accomplish both these objects, and that for that purpose they would enter into any intrigue which would probably lead to success.

With this design there can be but little doubt that they united with the adherents of the Stuarts. But this conspiracy could not have had any reference to a Masonic organization, because Free- masonry was during the life of James II. wholly unknown in France, and known in England only as a guild of Operative Masons, into which a few non-Masons had been admitted through courtesy. It certainly had not yet assumed the form in which we are called upon to recognize it as the political engine used by the Jesuits. The Grand Lodge of England, the mother of all modern Speculative Masonry, had no existence until 1717, or sixteen years after the death of the king.

During the life of his son and putative successor, the titular James III., Speculative Masonry was established in England and passed over into France.

The Lodge established in Paris in 1725 was, I have no doubt, an organization of the adherents of the Stuart family, as has already been shown. It is probable that most of the members were Catholics and under the influence of the Jesuits. But it is not likely that those priests took an active part in the internal organization of the Lodge.

In the Rose Croix and some other of the High Degrees we find the influences of a Roman Catholic spirit in the original rituals, but this might naturally arise from the religious tendencies of their founders, and did not require the special aid of Jesuitism.

After the year 1738 the bull of excommunication of Pope Clem- ent XII. must have precluded the Jesuits from all connection with Freemasonry except as its denouncers and persecutors, parts which up to the present day they have uninterruptedly played.

In conclusion we must, I think, refuse to accept the theory which makes a friendly connection between Freemasonry and Jesuitism as one of those mythical stories which, born in the imagination of its inventors, has been fostered only by the credulity of its believers.

At this day I doubt if there is a Masonic scholar who would accept it as more than a fable not even “ cunningly devised,” though there was a time when it was received as a part of the authentic history of Freemasonry.

Fables have been invented to establish a connection between Freemasonry and the dynasty of the Stuarts — one which made it the purpose of the adherents of James II. to use the Institution as a means of restoring that monarch to the throne ; a second in which the Jesuits were to employ it for the same purpose, as well as for the re-establishment of the Roman Catholic religion in England ; the third and most preposterous of these fables is that which attributes the invention of Freemasonry as a secret society to Oliver Cromwell, who is supposed to have employed it as a political engine to aid him in the dethronement of Charles I., in the abolition of the monarchy, and in the foundation of a republic on its ruins, with himself for its head.

The first and second of these fables have already been discussed. The consideration of the third will be the subject of the present chapter.