It follows that if there is no "Secret Government of the Jewish
Nation," such a Government cannot well be "the occult power which
works behind Freemasonry."[8] The _Morning Post_, however, is very
careful to hedge on this, as on many other points. Its alternative
theory is that Freemasonry is Judaical because it is descended from
the Templars, who received their Jewish traditions from the
Assassins.[9] The only foundation for the suggestion that the
Assassins could act as intermediaries between the Jews and the
Templars is, on the one hand, that they were Ishmaelites, and
consequently "first cousins" to the Jews, and, on the other, a much
disputed hypothesis of Von Hammer, that certain Templars were
initiated into the mysteries of the Assassins.[10] The truth is that
the Assassins were not Ishmaelites, except in the figurative sense
that all Mohammedans claim to be descended from Ishmael, and even if
they were, they had no contact with Jews, and their tenets bear no
trace of Jewish influence. Consequently, whatever else the Templars
may have learnt from them, they certainly did not learn Judaism. The
nearest approach to a tradition of Hebrew influence on Templarism is
found in a very dubious legend of Swedish Masonry which alleges that
certain Templars of Jerusalem received the secrets of the Essenes from
seven Syrian Christians whom they rescued from the Saracens.[11] But
if this story were true, the secrets thus taught would assuredly have
been more Christian than Jewish. To anyone, however, who knows
anything of mediaeval history, and the relations of Moslems and Jews at
this period, the whole of this conjecture is the crudest buffoonery.
No section of the Crusaders dealt with the Jews except by way of
massacre. Moreover, had there been the slightest ground for believing
that the Templars had Judaised it would have been seized upon as the
most damning of all crimes alleged against them when the Order was
suppressed. But throughout the comprehensive indictment, which ranges
from the Gnostic heresy to gross licentiousness, there is no hint of
the deadly sin of Judaism.