But the Illuminism of Lyons was destined soon to have a world-wide and
ineradicable hold on the Masonry of the world by means of an adept far
more able than Saint Martin or any of his associates. This was Adam
Weishaupt, a Professor of Canon Law in the University of Munich. I shall
detain you a while to consider this remarkable individual who, more than
any of the Atheists that have arisen in Masonry, has been the cause of
the success of its agencies in controlling the fate of the world since
his day. Had Weishaupt not lived, Masonry may have ceased to be a power
after the reaction consequent on the first French Revolution. He gave
it a form and character which caused it to outlive that reaction, to
energize to the present day, and which will cause it to advance until its
final conflict with Christianity must determine whether Christ or Satan
shall reign on this earth to the end.
Voltaire’s will to do God and man injury was as strong as that of
Weishaupt. His disciples, D’Alembert, Diderot, Damilaville, Condorcet,
and the rest, were as fully determined as he was, to eradicate
Christianity. But they desired in its stead a system with only a
mitigated antipathy for monarchy, and which might have tolerated for
a long time such kings as Frederick of Prussia, and such Empresses as
Catherine of Russia. But the hatred for God and all form of worship,
and the determination to found a universal republic on the lines of
Communism, was on the part of Weishaupt a settled sentiment. Possessed
of a rare power of organization, an education in law which made him a
pre-eminent teacher in its highest faculty, an extended knowledge of men
and things, a command over himself, a repute for external morality, and
finally, a position calculated to win able disciples, Weishaupt employed,
for fifty years after the death of Voltaire, his whole life and energies
in the one work of perfecting secret associations to accomplish by deep
deceit, and by force when that should be practical, the ruin of the
existing order of religion, civilization, and government, in order to
plant in its stead his own system of Atheism and Socialism.
He found contemporary Masonry well adapted for his ends. His object was
to extend it as far as possible as a means of seducing men away from
Christianity. He well knew that Masonry and the Church were in mortal
conflict, and that the moment a man became a Mason, he, that instant,
became excommunicated; he lost the grace of God; he passed into a state
of hostility to the Church; he ceased to approach the Sacraments; he was
constituted in a state of rebellion; he forfeited his liberty to unknown
superiors; he took a dreadful oath—perhaps many—not to reveal the secrets
then, or at any after time, to be committed to his keeping; and finally,
he placed himself amongst men, all of whom were in his own position, and
in whose society it was possible and easy for the astute disciples of
Weishaupt to lead him farther on the road to ruin.
Weishaupt’s view, then, was first to entice men into Masonry—into the
lowest degree. A great gain for evil was thus at once obtained. But a
man, though in Masonry, may not be willing to become an Atheist and a
Socialist, for some time at least. He may have in his heart a profound
conviction that a God existed, and some hope left of returning to that
God at or before his death. He may have entered Masonry for purposes of
ambition, for motives of vanity, from mere lightness of character. He may
continue his prayers, and refuse, if a Catholic, to give up the Mother of
God and some practice of piety loved by him from his youth. But Masonry
was a capital system to wean a man gradually away from all these things.
It did not at once deny the existence of God, nor at once attack the
Christian Dispensation. It commenced by giving the Christian idea of God,
an easy, and, under semblance of respect, an almost imperceptible shake.
It swore by the name of God in all its oaths. It called him, however,
not a Creator, only an architect—the great Architect of the universe.
It carefully avoided all mention of Christ, of the Adorable Trinity, of
the Unity of the Faith, or of any faith. It protested a respect for the
convictions of every man, for the idolatrous Parsee, for the Mahommedan,
for the Heretic, the Schismatic, the Catholic. By-and-by, it gave, in
higher degrees, a ruder shock to the belief in the Deity and a gradual
inducement to favour Naturalism. This it did gradually, imperceptibly,
but effectually. Now, to a man who meditated the vast designs of social
and religious destruction contemplated by Weishaupt, Masonry, especially
the Masonry of his period, was the most effective means that could be
conceived. In its midst, therefore, he planted his disciples, well
versed in his system. These consisted of three classes, each class
having subdivisions, and all of which were high degrees of Masonry. The
first class of Illuminati, was that of preparation. It consisted of two
degrees, namely, the degree of Novice and that of Minerval. The Minervals
formed the great body of the order, and were under the direction of
certain chiefs, who themselves were subjected to other agencies invisible
to those instructed by themselves. Weishaupt instructed the teachers of
the Minervals to propose each year to their scholars some interesting
questions, to cause them to write themes calculated to spread impiety
amongst the people, such as burlesques on the Psalms, pasquinades on the
Prophets, and caricatures of personages of the Old Testament after the
manner of Voltaire and his school. It is surprising with what exactitude
these Minervals follow out the instructions of Weishaupt to this day.
At this moment, in London, under the eyes of the Lord Chancellor,
pamphlets, with hideous woodcuts, ridiculing David, “the man after God’s
own heart,” are weekly published. One of these, which was handed to
me in a public place, had a woodcut representing the “meek Monarch of
Judea,” with a head just severed from a human body in one hand, and the
sword that did the deed in the other. Another represented him amidst a
set of ridiculous figures dancing. From this we can easily judge that
illuminated Masonry is at work somewhere even in London, and that the
Masonry in high quarters is blind to its excesses, exactly as happened in
France a few years before the French Revolution. Now these Minervals, if
they manifested what the German Masons call “religionary” inclinations,
might indeed receive the first three Masonic degrees, but they were not
to be further promoted in Illuminism. They were relegated to the rank
and file of Masonry, who were of use in many ways for the movement,
but they were never to be trusted with the real secret. The teacher,
without seeming to do so, was ordered to encourage, but not to applaud
publicly, such blasphemies as the Minervals might make use of in their
essays. They were to be led on, seemingly by themselves, in the ways of
irreligion, immorality, and Atheism, until ripe for further promotion in
evil progress. Finally, in the advanced grades of Illuminated Major and
Minor, and in those of Scotch Knight and Epopte or Priest they were told
the whole secret of the Order as follows, in a discourse by the initiator.
“Remember,” he said, “that from the first invitations which we have
given you, in order to attract you to us, we have commenced by telling
you that in the projects of our Order there did not enter any designs
against religion. You remember that such an assurance was again given to
you when you were admitted into the ranks of our Novices, and that it was
repeated when you entered into our Minerval Academy. Remember also how
much from the first grades we have spoken to you of morality and virtue,
but at the same time how much the studies which we prescribed for you
and the instructions which we gave you rendered both morality and virtue
independent of all religion; how much we have been at pains to make you
understand, while making to you the eulogy of religion, that it was not
anything else than those mysteries, and that worship degenerated in the
hands of the priest. You remember with what art, with what simulated
respect we have spoken to you of Christ and of his Gospel; but in the
grades of greater Illuminism, of Scotch Knight, and of Epopte or Priest,
how we have known to form from Christ’s Gospel that of our reason, and
from its morality that of nature, and from its religion that of nature,
and from religion, reason, morality, and nature, to make the religion and
the morality of the rights of man, of equality, and of liberty. Remember,
that while insinuating to you the different parts of this system, we have
caused them to bud forth from yourselves as if your own opinions. We
have placed you on the way; you have replied to our questions very much
more than we did to yours. When we demanded of you, for example, whether
the religions of peoples responded to the end for which men adopted them;
if the religion of Christ, pure and simple, was that which the different
sects professed to-day, we knew well enough what to hold. But it was
necessary to know to what point we had succeeded to cause our sentiments
to germinate in you. We have had very many prejudices to overcome in you,
before being able to persuade you, that the pretended religion of Christ
was nothing else than the work of priests, of imposture, and of tyranny.
If it be so with that religion so much proclaimed and admired, what are
we to think of other religions? Understand, then, that they have all the
same fictions for their origin, that they are all equally founded on
lying, error, chimera, and imposture. Behold our secret!
“The turns and counter-turns which it was necessary to make; the eulogies
which it was necessary to give to the pretended secret schools; the fable
of the Freemasons being in possession of the veritable doctrine; and our
Illuminism to-day, the sole inheritor of these mysteries, will no longer
astonish you at this moment. If, in order to destroy all Christianity,
all religion, we have pretended to have the sole true religion, remember
that the end justifies the means, and that the wise ought to take all
the means to do good, which the wicked take to do evil. Those which we
have taken to deliver you, those which we take to deliver one day the
human race from all religion, are nothing else than a pious fraud which
we reserve to unveil some day in the grade of Magus or Philosopher
Illuminated.”—_Segur Le Secret de la Franc-Maçonnerie_, p. 49.
The above extract will serve to show you what manner of man Weishaupt
was, and the quality of the teaching he invented. His organization—for
the perfection of which he deeply studied the constitution of the then
suppressed Society of Jesus—contemplated placing the thread of the whole
conspiracy, destined to be controlled by the Illuminati, in the hands
of one man, advised by a small council. The Illuminati were to be in
Masonry and of Masonry, so as to move amongst its members secretly.
They were so trained that they could obtain the mastery in every form
of secret society, and thus render it subservient to their own Chief.
Their fidelity to him was made perfect by the most severe and complex
system of espionage. The Chief himself was kept safe by his position,
his long training, and by his council. It thus happened that no matter
to what office or position the Illuminati attained, they had to become
subservient to the general aims of the Order. Weishaupt, after being
deprived of his professorship in Bavaria, found an asylum with the
Prince of Coburg-Gotha, where he remained in honour, affluence, and
security, until his death in 1830. He continued all his life the Chief
of the Illuminati, and this fact may account, in large measure, for the
fidelity with which the Illuminati of the Revolution, the Directory,
the Consulate, the Empire, the Restoration, and the Revolution of 1830,
invariably carried out his programme of perpetual conspiracy for the
ends he had in view. It may also account for the strange vitality of
the spirit of the Illuminati in Italy, Switzerland, Germany, and Spain,
and of its continuance through the “Illuminated” reigns of Nubius and
Palmerston, the successors of Weishaupt to our own day. This we shall
see further on; but, meanwhile, we shall glance at the first step of
Weishaupt to rule over Masonry through his disciples. This was by calling
together the famous “General Council” of Freemasonry, known as—