[1] L’Eglise Romaine en face de la Révolution Par J. Crétineau-Joly,
ouvrage composé sur des documents inédits et orné des portraits de Leurs
Saintetés Les Papes Pie VII. Et Pie IX dessinés par Stall. Paris: Henri
Plon, Libraire-éditeur, Rue Garancière, 8.—1861.
[2] To show how early the confederates of Voltaire had determined upon
the gradual impoverishment of the Church and the suppression of the
Religious orders, the following letters from Frederick II., will be of
use. In the first dated 13th August, 1775, the Monarch writes to the then
very aged “Patriarch of Ferney,” who had demanded the secularization of
the Rhine ecclesiastical electorates and other episcopal benefices in
Germany, as follows:—
“All you say concerning our German bishops is but too true; they grow
fat upon the tithes of Sion. But you know, also, that in the Holy Roman
Empire the ancient usage, the Bull of Gold, and other antique follies,
cause abuses established to be respected. If we wish to diminish
fanaticism we must not touch the bishops. But, if we manage to diminish
the monks, especially the mendicant orders, the people will grow cold
and less superstitious, they will permit the powers that be, to dispose
of the bishops in the manner best suited to the good of each State. This
is the only course to follow. To undermine silently and without noise
the edifice of infatuation is to oblige it to fall of itself. The Pope,
seeing the situation in which he finds himself, is obliged to give briefs
and bulls as his dear sons demand of him. The power founded upon the
ideal credit of the faith loses in proportion as the latter diminishes.
If there were now found at the head of nations some ministers above
vulgar prejudices, the Holy Father would become bankrupt. Without doubt
posterity will enjoy the advantage of being able to think freely.”
Again, this curious compound of warrior, despot, Protestant free-thinker,
poet, and mocker, writes to Voltaire, on the 8th September, 1775:—
“It is to Bayle, your predecessor, and to you, without doubt, that the
glory is due of that revolution which has taken place in minds, but, to
say the truth, it is not complete. The devotees have their party, and
never will that be crushed except by a greater force. It is from the
Governments that the sentence must go forth.... Without doubt this will
be done in time, but neither you nor I will be spectators of an event so
much desired.”
“I have remarked,” he says, also, “and others with me, that the places
where there are most convents and monks are those wherein the people are
most given to superstition. It is not doubtful that if we could succeed
in destroying these asylums of fanaticism, the people would shortly grow
indifferent and lukewarm regarding the things which form at present the
objects of their veneration. It would be necessary then to destroy the
cloisters, or at least to commence to diminish their number. The moment
is arrived because the French Government and that of Austria are so
indebted that they have exhausted the resources of industry without being
able to pay their debts. The list of rich abbeys and of convents, with a
good rent-roll, is seducing. In representing to them the evil which the
cenobites do the population of their States, as well as the abuse of the
great number of religious who fill their provinces, and, in the meantime,
the facility of paying a part of their debts, by applying to that
purpose the treasures of communities which have no natural succession,
I think they could be brought to determine upon commencing that reform.
It is to be presumed that after having enjoyed the secularization of
some benefices their avidity would soon swallow up the rest. Every
Government, which determines upon that operation, will desire the spread
of philosophers and be a partisan of all the books which attack popular
superstitions and the false zeal of hypocrites, who wish to oppose them.
Behold a little project which I wish to submit for the examination of
the Patriarch of Ferney. It is for him, as the Father of the Faithful,
to rectify and to execute it. The Patriarch may demand of me, perhaps,
what is to be done with the bishops. I answer that it is not yet the time
to touch them, that it is necessary to commence by destroying those who
inflame with fanaticism the hearts of the people. When the people shall
have grown cold the bishops will become little boys, whom the Sovereigns
will dispose of in the course of time at their good pleasure.”
[3] In 1768 Voltaire wrote as follows to the Marquis de Villevielle:—“No,
my dear Marquis, no, the modern Socrates will not drink the hemlock. The
Socrates of Athens was, between you and me, a pitiless caviller, who made
himself a thousand enemies and who braved his judges very foolishly.
“Our modern philosophers are more adroit. They have not the foolish
and dangerous vanity to put their names to their works. Theirs are the
invisible hands which pierce fanaticism from one end of Europe to the
other with the arrows of truth. Damilaville recently died. He was the
author of ‘Christianism unveiled,’ and many other writings. No one ever
knew him. His friends preserved the secret of his name as long as he
lived with a fidelity worthy of philosophy. No one yet knows who is the
author of the work given under the name of Pieret. In Holland, during
the last two years, they have printed more than sixty volumes against
superstition. The authors of them are absolutely unknown, although they
could boldly proclaim themselves. The Italian who has written the ‘Reform
of Italy,’ has not cared to present his work to the Pope, but his book
has a prodigious effect. A thousand pens write and a hundred thousand
voices arise against abuses and in favour of tolerance. Be assured that
the revolution which has taken place in minds during the past twelve
years has served, and not a little, to drive the Jesuits from so many
States, and to strongly encourage princes to strike at the idol of Rome
which caused them all to tremble at another epoch. The people are very
stupid and, nevertheless, the light has penetrated even to them. Be very
sure, for example, that there are not twenty persons in Geneva who do not
abjure Calvin as well as the Pope, and that there are philosophers even
in the shops of Paris.
“I shall die consoled in seeing the true religion, that of the heart,
established on the ruins of affectations. I have never preached but the
adoration of one God, beneficence and indulgence. With these sentiments I
brave the devil who does not exist and the true devils who exist only too
much.”
[4] _See Le Secret de la Franc-Maçonnerie, par Monsigneur Amand Joseph
Fava, Eveque de Grenoble. Lille_, 1883, p. 38.
[5] _Opus Cit._ p. 8.
[6] M. Gougenot-Demousseaux, in his work on the Jew, Judaism, and the
Judaization of Christian people (Paris 1869), has brought together
a great number of indications on the relations of the high chiefs
of Masonry with Judaism. He thus concludes:—“Masonry, that immense
association, the rare initiates of which, that is to say, the real
chiefs of which, whom we must be careful not to confound with the
nominal chiefs, live in a strict and intimate alliance with the militant
members of Judaism, princes and imitators of the high cabal. For that
_élite_ of the order—these real chiefs whom so few of the initiated
know, or whom they only know for the most part under a _nom de guerre_,
are employed in the profitable and secret dependence of the cabalistic
Israelites. And this phenomenon is accomplished, thanks to the habits
of rigorous discretion to which they subject themselves by oaths and
terrible menaces; thanks also to the majority of Jewish members which the
mysterious constitution of Masonry seats in its sovereign counsel.”
M. Cretineau Joly gives a very interesting account of the correspondence
between Nubius and an opulent German Jew who supplied him with money
for the purposes of his dark intrigues against the Papacy. The Jewish
connection with modern Freemasonry is an established fact everywhere
manifested in its history. The Jewish formulas employed by Masonry,
the Jewish traditions which run through its ceremonial, point to a
Jewish origin, or to the work of Jewish contrivers. It is easy to
conceive how such a society could be thought necessary to protect them
from Christianity in power. It is easy also to understand how the one
darling object of their lives is the rebuilding of the Temple. Who knows
but behind the Atheism and desire of gain which impels them to urge
on Christians to persecute the Church and to destroy it, there lies a
hidden hope to reconstruct their Temple, and as the darkest depths of
secret society plotting there lurks a deeper society still which looks
to a return to the land of Juda and to the rebuilding of the Temple of
Jerusalem. One of the works which Antichrist will do, it is said, is
to reunite the Jews, and to proclaim himself as their long looked-for
Messias. As it is now generally believed, he is to come from Masonry and
to be of it, this is not improbable, for in it he will find the Jews the
most inveterate haters of Christianity, the deepest plotters, and the
fittest to establish his reign.
[7] See section xxi. “Freemasonry with Ourselves,” page 121.
[8] Before the celebrated “Convent” of Wilhelmsbad there was a thorough
understanding between the Freemasons of the various Catholic countries
of Continental Europe. This was manifested in the horrible intrigues
which led to the suppression of the Society of Jesus in France, Spain,
Portugal, Germany, and Naples; and which finally compelled Clement XIV.
to dissolve the great body by ecclesiastical authority. No doubt the
Jesuits had very potent enemies in the Jansenists, the Gallicans, and in
others whose party spirit and jealousy were stronger than their sense of
the real good of religion. But without the unscrupulous intrigues of the
Infidels of Voltaire’s school banded into a compact active league by the
newly-developed Freemasonry, the influence of the sects of Christians
hostile to the Order could never effect an effacement so complete and
so general. Anglican lodges, we must remember, appeared in Spain and
Portugal as soon as in France. One was opened in Gibraltar in 1726, and
one in Madrid in 1727. This latter broke with the mother lodge of London
in 1779, and founded lodges in Barcelona, Cadiz, Vallidolid, and other
cities. There were several lodges at work in Lisbon as early as 1735.
The Duke de Choiseul, a Freemason, with the aid of the abominable de
Pompadour, the harlot of the still more abominable Louis XV., succeeded
in driving the Jesuits from France. He then set about influencing his
brother Masons, the Count De Aranda, Prime Minister of Charles III. of
Spain, and the infamous Carvalho-Pombal, the _alter ego_ of the weak
King of Portugal, to do the same work in the Catholic States of their
respective sovereigns. The Marquis de L’Angle, a French Freemasonic
Atheist, and friend of Choiseul, thus writes of De Aranda—“He is the
only man of which Spain can be proud of at this moment. He is the sole
Spaniard of our days whom posterity will place on its tablets. It is he
whom it will love to place on the front of all its temples, and whose
name it will engrave on its escutcheon together with the names of Luther,
of Calvin, of Mahomet, of William Penn, and of Jesus Christ! It is he who
desired to sell the wardrobe of the saints, the property of virgins, and
to convert the cross, the chandeliers, the patens, &c., into bridges and
inns and main roads.” We cannot be surprised at what De Aranda attempted
after this testimony. He conspired with Choiseul to forge a letter as if
from the General of the Jesuits, Ricci, which purported to prove that
the King’s mother was an adulteress, and that the King had no claim to
the Spanish throne. Secretly, therefore, an order was obtained from the
weak Monarch, and on a given day and hour the Jesuits in all parts of
the Spanish dominions were dragged from their homes, placed on board
ships, and cast on the shores of the Pontifical States in a condition of
utter destitution. A calumny as atrocious and unfounded enabled Pombal
to inflict a worse fate on the Jesuits of Portugal and its dependencies.
Charles III. ordered Panucci, another Masonic enemy of the Jesuits, to
banish the members of the society from Naples, where his son reigned.
Geiser writes to Voltaire that the half-fool Joseph II. was initiated in
the mysteries of Masonry and accordingly the Jesuits, notwithstanding the
sympathies of the Empress Mary Theresa, fell in Austria. The world was
left thus free for the Masonic philosophers to compass the destruction
which they planned at Wilhelmsbad and effected in the Revolution eight
years afterwards.
[9] It is commonly believed that the encyclopædists and philosophers were
the only men who overturned by their writings altar and throne at the
time of the Revolution. But, apart from the facts that these writers were
to a man Freemasons, and the most daring and plotting of Freemasons, we
have abundant authority to prove that other Freemasons were everywhere
even more practically engaged in the same work. Louis Blanc, who will be
accepted as an authority on this point thus writes:—“It is of consequence
to introduce the reader into the mine which at that time was being dug
beneath thrones and altars by revolutionists, very much more profound and
active than the encyclopædists: an association composed of men of all
countries, of all religions, of all ranks, bound together by symbolic
bonds, engaged under an inviolable oath to preserve the secret of their
interior existence. They were forced to undergo terrific proofs while
occupying themselves with fantastic ceremonies, but otherwise practised
beneficence and looked upon themselves as equals though divided in three
classes, apprentices, companions, and masters. Freemasonry consists in
that. Now, on the eve of the French Revolution, Freemasonry was found to
have received an immense development. Spread throughout the entire of
Europe, it seconded the meditative genius of Germany, agitated France
silently, and presented everywhere the image of a society founded on
principles contrary to those of civil society.” Monsignor Segur writes
on this—“See to what a point the reign of Jesus Christ was menaced at
the hour the Revolution broke out. It was not France alone that it
agitated, but the entire of Europe. What do I say? The world was in the
power of Masonry. All the lodges of the world came in 1781 to Wilhelmsbad
by delegates from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; from the most
distant coasts discovered by navigators, they came, zealous apostles
of Masonry.... They all returned penetrated with the Illuminism of
Weishaupt, that is Atheism, and animated with the poison of incredulity
with which the orators of the Convent had inspired them. Europe and the
Masonic world were then in arms against Catholicity. Therefore, when the
signal was given, the shock was terrible, terrible especially in France,
in Italy, in Spain, in the Catholic nations which they wished to separate
from the Pope and cast into schism, until the time came when they could
completely de-Christianize them. This accounts well for the captivities
of Pius VI. and Pius VII. The Cardinals were dispersed, the Bishops torn
from their Sees, the pastors separated from their flocks, the religious
orders destroyed, the goods of the Church confiscated, the churches
overturned, the convents turned into barracks, the sacred vessels stolen
and melted down by sacrilegious avidity, the bells turned into money
and cannons, scaffolds erected everywhere, and victims in thousands,
in hecatombs, especially from amongst the clergy; in one word, all the
horrors summed up in the ‘Revolution,’ and the end, which was the great
unerring power of all its actions, namely, to see Christ cast down from
His altars to make way for the goddess called Reason.”
[10] Alexander Dumas in his _Memoires de Garibaldi_, first series, p. 34,
tells us:—
“Illuminism and Freemasonry, these two great enemies of royalty, and the
adopted device of both of which was L. P. D., _lilia pedibus destrue_,
had a grand part in the French Revolution.
“Napoleon took Masonry under his protection. Joseph Napoleon was Grand
Master of the Order. Joachim Murat second Master adjoint. The Empress
Josephine being at Strasburg, in 1805, presided over the fete for the
adoption of the lodge of True Chevaliers of Paris. At the same time
Eugene de Beauharnais was Venerable of the lodge of St. Eugene in Paris.
Having come to Italy with the title of Viceroy, the Grand Orient of
Milan, named him Master and Sovereign Commander of the Supreme Council
of the thirty-second grade, that is to say, accorded him the greatest
honour which could be given him according to the Statutes of the Order.
Bernadotte was a Mason. His son Oscar was Grand Master of the Swedish
lodge. In the different lodges of Paris were successively initiated,
Alexander, Duke of Wurtemburg; the Prince Bernard of Saxe-Weimer; even
the Persian Ambassador, Askeri Khan. The President of the Senate, Count
de Lacipede, presided over the Grand Orient of France, which had for
officers of honour the Generals Kellerman, Messina, and Soult. Princes,
Ministers, Marshals, Officers, Magistrates, all the men, in fine,
remarkable for their glory or considerable by their position, ambitioned
to be made Masons. The women even wished to have their lodges, into which
entered Mesdames de Vaudemont, de Carignan, de Gerardin, de Narbonne, and
many other ladies.”
Frere Clavel, in his picturesque history of Freemasonry, says that, “Of
all these high personages the Prince Cambaceres was the one who most
occupied himself with Masonry. He made it his duty to rally to Masonry
all the men in France who were influential by their official position,
by their talent, or by their fortune. The personal services which he
rendered to many of the brethren; the _eclat_ which he caused to be
given to the lodges in bringing to their sittings by his example and
invitations all those illustrious amongst the military and judicial
professions and others, contributed powerfully to the fusion of parties
and to the consolidation of the imperial throne. In effect under his
brilliant and active administration the lodges multiplied _ad infinitum_.
They were composed of the elect of French society. They became a point
of reunion for the partisans of the existing and of passed regimes. They
celebrated in them the feasts of the Emperor. They read in them the
bulletins of his victories before they were made public by the press, and
able men organized the enthusiasm which gradually took hold of all minds.”
[11] Deschamps says that it was at this period that the order of the
Templars (for Masonry is divided into any amount of rites which exercise
one over the other a kind of influence in proportion to the members of
the inner grades which they contain) was resuscitated in France. It
publicly interred one of its members from the Church of St. Antoine.
The funeral oration of Jacques Molay was publicly pronounced. Napoleon
permitted this. The danger his permission created was foreseen, and
M. de Maistre writes:—“A very remarkable phenomenon is that of the
resuscitation of Freemasonry in France, so far, that a brother has
been interred solemnly in Paris with all the attributes and ceremonies
of the order. The Master who reigns in France does not leave it to
be even suspected that such a thing can exist in France without his
leave. Judging from his known character and from his ideas upon secret
societies, how then can the thing be explained? Is he the Chief, or dupe,
or perhaps the one and the other of a society which he thinks he knows,
and which mocks him.” Illustrating these remarks we have the comments
of M. Bagot in his _Codes des Franc-Maçons_, p. 183:—“The Imperial
Government took advantage of its omnipotence, to which so many men, so
many institutions, yielded so complacently, in order to dominate over
Masonry. The latter became neither afraid nor revolted. What did it
desire in effect? To extend its empire—It permitted itself to become
subject to despotism in order to become sovereign.” This gives us the
whole reason why Masonry first permitted Napoleon to rule, then to reign,
then to conquer, and finally to fall.
[12] At the Council of Verona, held by the European sovereigns in 1822,
to guard their thrones and peoples from the revolutionary excesses which
threatened Spain, Naples, and Piedmont, the Count Haugwitz, Minister of
the King of Prussia, who then accompanied his master, made the following
speech:—
“Arrived at the end of my career, I believe it to be my duty to cast a
glance upon the secret societies whose power menaces humanity to-day
more than ever. Their history is so bound up with that of my life that I
cannot refrain from publishing it once more and from giving some details
regarding it.
“My natural disposition, and my education, having excited in me so great
a desire for information, that I could not content myself with ordinary
knowledge, I wished to penetrate into the very essence of things. But
shadow follows light, thus an insatiable curiosity develops itself in
proportion to the efforts which one makes to penetrate further into the
sanctuary of science. These two sentiments impelled me to enter into the
society of Freemasons.
“It is well known that the first step which one makes in the order is
little calculated to satisfy the mind. That is precisely the danger
to be dreaded for the inflammable imagination of youth. Scarcely had
I attained my majority, when, not only did I find myself at the head
of Masonry, but what is more, I occupied a distinguished place in the
chapter of high grades. Before I had the power of knowing myself, before
I could comprehend the situation in which I had rashly engaged myself, I
found myself charged with the superior direction of the Masonic reunions
of a part of Prussia, of Poland, and of Russia. Masonry was, at that
time, divided into two parts, in its secret labours. The first place
in its emblems, the explanation of the philosopher’s stone: Deism and
non-Atheism was the religion of these sectaries. The central seat of
their labours was at Berlin, under the direction of the Doctor Zumdorf.
It was not the same with the other part of which the Duke of Brunswick
was the apparent Chief. In open conflict between themselves, the two
parties gave each other the hand in order to obtain the dominion of the
world, to conquer thrones, to serve themselves with Kings as an order,
such was their aim. It would be superfluous to explain to you in what
manner, in my ardent curiosity, I came to know the secrets of the one
party and of the other. The truth is the secret of the two sects is no
longer a mystery for me. That secret is revolting.
“It was in the year 1777, that I became charged with the direction of
one part of the Prussian lodges, three or four years before the Convent
of Wilhelmsbad and the invasion of the lodges by Illuminism. My action
extended even over the brothers dispersed throughout Poland and Russia.
If I did not myself see it, I could not give myself even a plausible
explanation of the carelessness with which Governments have been able to
shut their eyes to such a disorder, a veritable state within a State. Not
only were the chiefs in constant correspondence, and employed particular
cyphers, but even they reciprocally sent emissaries one to another. To
exercise a dominating influence over thrones, such was our aim, as it had
been of the Knight Templars.
“I thus acquired the firm conviction that the drama commenced in 1788 and
1789, the French Revolution, the regicide with all its horrors, not only
was then resolved upon, but was even the result of these associations and
oaths, &c.
“Of all my contemporaries of that epoch there is not one left.... My
first care was to communicate to William III. all my discoveries. We
came to the conclusion that all the Masonic associations, from the most
humble even to the very highest degrees, could not do otherwise than
employ religious sentiments in order to execute plans the most criminal,
and make use of the first in order to cover the second. This conviction,
which His Highness Prince William held in common with me, caused me to
take the firm resolution of renouncing Masonry.”
[13] Mazzini, after exhorting his followers to attract as many of the
higher classes as possible to the secret plotting, which has resulted in
united Italy, and is meant to result in republican Italy as a prelude
to republican Europe, says, “Associate, associate. All is contained in
that word. The secret societies can give an irresistible force to the
party who are able to invoke them. Do not fear to see them divided. The
more they are divided the better it will be. All of them advance to the
same end by different paths. The secret will be often unveiled. So much
the better. The secret is necessary to give security to members, but a
certain transparency is necessary to strike fear into those wishing to
remain stationary. When a great number of associates who receive the
word of command to scatter an idea abroad and make it public opinion,
can concert even for a moment they will find the old edifice pierced in
all its parts, and falling, as if by a miracle, at the least breath of
progress. They will themselves be astonished to see kings, lords, men of
capital, priests, and all those who form the carcass of the old social
edifice, fly before the sole power of public opinion. Courage, then, and
perseverance.”
[14] The following extracts from the rules of the Carbonari of Italy,
“Young Italy,” will give an idea of the spirit and intent of the order as
improved by the warlike and organizing genius of Mazzini:—
ART. I.—The society is formed for the indispensable destruction of all
the Governments of the Peninsula and to form of Italy one sole State
under a Republican Government.
ART. II.—Having experienced the horrible evils of absolute power and
those yet greater of constitutional monarchies, we ought to work to found
a Republic one and indivisible.
ART. XXX.—Those who do not obey the orders of the secret society, or who
shall reveal its mysteries, shall be poniarded without remission. The
same chastisement for traitors.
ART. XXXI.—The secret tribunal shall pronounce the sentence and shall
design one or two affiliated members for its immediate execution.
ART. XXXII.—Whoever shall refuse to execute the sentence shall be
considered a perjurer, and as such shall be killed on the spot.
ART. XXXIII.—If the culpable individual escape he shall be pursued
without intermission in every place, and he ought be struck by an
invisible hand, even should he take refuge in the bosom of his mother or
in the tabernacles of Christ.
ART. XXXIV.—Every secret tribunal shall be competent not only to judge
the culpable adepts, but also to cause to be put to death every person
whom it shall have stricken with anathema.
ART. XXXIX.—The officers shall carry a dagger of antique form, the
sub-officers and soldiers shall have guns and bayonets, together with a
poniard a foot long attached to their cincture, and upon which they will
take oath, &c.
A large number of inspectors of police, generals, and statesmen,
were assassinated by order of these tribunals. The lodges assisted
in that work. Eckert says, _La Franc-Maçonnerie_, t. ii., p. 218,
219—“Mazzini was the head of that Young Europe and of the warlike power
of Freemasonry, and we find in the _Latomia_ that the minister Nothorub,
who had retired from it, say to M. Vesbugem, even in the national palace
in presence of six deputies, that the actual Freemasonry in Belgium had
become a powerful and dangerous arm in the hands of certain men, that
the Swiss insurrection had its resting place in the machinations of the
Belgian lodges, and that Brother Defacqz, Grand Master of these lodges,
had undertaken, in 1844, a voyage to Switzerland, only in order to
prepare that agitation.”
[15] Nubius, who, in conjunction with the Templars of France, and the
secret friends of the Revolution in England, had caused all the troubles
endured by the Church and the Holy Father during the celebrated Congress
of Rome and during the entire reign of Louis Philippe, and had so ably
planned the revolutions afterwards carried out by Palmerston and Napoleon
III., was written to before his death by one of his fellow-conspirators
in the following strain:—“We have pushed most things to extremes. We have
taken away from the people all the gods of heaven and earth that they had
in homage. We have taken away their religious faith, their monarchical
faith, their virtue, their probity, their family virtue; and, meantime,
what do we hear in the distance but low bellowing; we tremble, for the
monster may devour us. We have little by little deprived the people of
all honourable sentiment. They will be without pity. The more I think on
it the more I am convinced that we must seek delay of payment.”
[16] Opus, cit. ii. 23.
[17] _La Franc-Maçonnerie dans sa véritable signification_, par Eckert,
avocat à Dresde, trad. par Gyr (Liège 1854), t. I., p. 287, appendice.
See also _Les Sociétés Revolutionnaires. Introduction de l’action des
Sociétés Sècrètes an xix. Siècle. Par M. Claude Janet, Deschamps, Opus
cit._ xciii.
[18] M. Eckert (_opus cit._), was a Saxon lawyer of immense erudition,
who devoted his life to unravel the mysteries of secret societies, and
who published several documents of great value upon their action. He has
been of opinion that “the interior order” not only now but always existed
and governed the exterior mass of Masonry, and its cognate and subject
secret societies. He says:—“Masonry being a universal association is
governed by one only chief called a Patriarch. The title of Grand Master
of the Order is not the exclusive privilege of a family or of a nation.
Scotland, England, France, and Germany have in their time had the honour
to give the order its supreme chief. It appears that Lord Palmerston is
clothed to-day (Eckert wrote in Lord Palmerston’s time) with the dignity
of Patriarch.
“At the side of the Patriarch are found two committees, the one
legislative and the other executive. These committees, composed of
delegates of the Grand Orients (mother national lodges), alone know the
Patriarch, and are alone in relation with him.
“All the revolutions of modern times prove that the order is divided into
two distinct parties—the one pacific the other warlike.
“The first employs only intellectual means—that is to say, speech and
writing.
“It brings the authorities or the persons whose destruction it has
resolved upon to succumb or to mutual destruction.
“It seeks for the profit of the order all the places in the State, in
the Church (Protestant), and in the Universities; in one word, all the
positions of influence.
“It seduces the masses and dominates over public opinion by means of the
press and of associations.
“Its Directory bears the name of the Grand Orient and it closes its
lodges (I will say why presently) the moment the warlike division causes
the masses which they have won over to secret societies to descend into
the street.
“At the moment when the pacific division has pushed its works
sufficiently far that a violent attack has chances of success, then, at
a time not far distant, when men’s passions are inflamed; when authority
is sufficiently weakened; or when the important posts are occupied by
traitors, the warlike division will receive orders to employ all its
activity.
“The Directory of the belligerent division is called the Firmament.
“From the moment they come to armed attacks, and that the belligerent
division has taken the reins, the lodges of the pacific division are
closed. These tactics again denote all the _ruses_ of the order.
“In effect, they thus prevent the order being accused of co-operating in
the revolt.
“Moreover, the members of the belligerent division, as high dignitaries,
form part of the pacific division, but not reciprocally, as the existence
of that division is unknown to the great part of the members of the
other division—the first can fall back on the second in case of want of
success. The brethren of the pacific division are eager to protect by
all the means in their power the brethren of the belligerent division,
representing them as patriots too ardent, who have permitted themselves
to be carried away by the current in defiance of the prescriptions of
order and prudence.”
[19] In page 340, of his work on Jews, &c., already quoted, M. G.
Demousseaux reproduces an article from the Political Blueter, of Munich,
in 1862, in which is pointed out the existence in Germany, in Italy,
and in London, of directing-lodges unknown to the mass of Masons, and
in which Jews are in the majority. “At London, where is found the home
of the revolution under the Grand Master, Palmerston, there exists two
Jewish lodges which never permit Christians to pass their threshold. It
is there that all the threads and all the elements of the revolution
are reunited which are hatched in the Christian lodges.” Further, M.
Demousseaux cites the opinion (p. 368) of a Protestant statesman in the
service of a great German Power, who wrote to him in December, 1865, “at
the outbreak of the revolution of 1845 I found myself in relation with a
Jew who by vanity betrayed the secret of the secret societies to which
he was associated, and who informed me eight or ten days in advance, of
all the revolutions which were to break out upon every point of Europe.
I owe to him the immovable conviction that all these grand movements of
‘oppressed people’ &c., &c., are managed by a half-a-dozen individuals
who give their advice to the secret societies of the entire of Europe.”
Henry Misley, a great authority also, wrote to Père Deschamps, “I know
the world a little, and I know that in all that ‘grand future’ which is
being prepared, there are not more than four or five persons who hold the
cards. A great number think they hold them, but they deceive themselves.”
[20] Mr. F. Hugh O’Donnell, the able M.P. for Dungarvan, contributed to
the pages of the Dublin _Freeman’s Journal_ a most useful and interesting
paper which showed on his part a careful study of the works of Monsgr.
Segur and other continental authorities on Freemasonry. In this, he
says, regarding his own recollections of contemporary events:—“It is
now many years since I heard from my lamented master and friend, the
Rev. Sir Christopher Bellew, of the Society of Jesus, these impressive
words. Speaking of the tireless machinations and ubiquitous influence
of Lord Palmerston against the temporal independence of the Popes, Sir
Christopher Bellew said:—
“Lord Palmerston is much more than a hostile statesman. He would never
have such influence on the Continent if he were only an English Cabinet
Minister. But he is a Freemason and one of the highest and greatest of
Freemasons. It is he who sends what is called the Patriarchal Voice
through the lodges of Europe. And to obtain that rank he must have given
the most extreme proofs of his insatiable hatred to the Catholic Church.”
Another illustration of the manner in which European events are moved
by hidden currents was given me by the late Major-General Burnaby,
M.P., a quiet and amiable soldier, who, though to all appearance one of
the most unobtrusive of men, was employed in some of the most delicate
and important work of British policy in the East. General Burnaby was
commissioned to obtain and preserve the names and addresses of all the
Italian members of the foreign legion enlisted for the British service
in the Crimean War. This was in 1855 and 1856. After the war these
men, mostly reckless and unscrupulous characters—“fearful scoundrels”
General Burnaby called them—dispersed to their native provinces, but
the clue to find them again was in General Burnaby’s hands, and when a
couple of years later Cavour and Palmerston, in conjunction with the
Masonic lodges, considered the moment opportune to let loose the Italian
Revolution, the list of the Italian foreign legion was communicated to
the Sardinian Government and was placed in the hands of the Garibaldian
Directory, who at once sought out most of the men. In this way several
hundreds of “fearful scoundrels,” who had learned military skill and
discipline under the British flag, were supplied to Garibaldi to form
the corps of his celebrated “Army of Emancipation” in the two Sicilies
and the Roman States. While the British diplomatists at Turin and Naples
carried on, under cover of their character as envoys, the dangerous
portion of the Carbonarist conspiracy, the taxpayers of Great Britain
contributed in this manner to raise and train an army destined to
confiscate the possessions of the Religious Orders and the Church in
Italy, and, in its remoter operation, to assail, and, if possible,
destroy the world-wide mission of the Holy Propaganda itself.
[21] The late celebrated Monsignor Dupanloup published, in 1875, an
invaluable little treatise, in which he gave, from the expressions of
the most eminent Masons in France and elsewhere, from the resolutions
taken in principal lodges, and from the opinions of their chief literary
organs, proofs that what is here stated is correct. The following
extracts regarding education will show what Masonry has been doing in
regard to that most vital question. Monsignor Dupanloup says:—“In the
great lodge called the ‘Rose of Perfect Silence,’ it was proposed at one
time for the consideration of the brethren:—‘Ought religious education
be suppressed?’ This was answered as follows:—‘Without any doubt the
principle of supernatural authority, that is faith in God, takes from a
man his dignity; is useless for the discipline of children, and there
is also in it, the danger of the abandonment of all morality’.... ‘The
respect, specially due to the child, prohibits the teaching to him of
doctrines, which disturb his reason.’”
To show the reason of the activity of the Masons, all the world over,
for the diffusion of irreligious education, it will be sufficient to
quote the view of the the _Monde Maçonnique_ on the subject. It says, in
its issue of May 1st, 1865, “An immense field is open to our activity.
Ignorance and superstition weigh upon the world. Let us seek to create
schools, professorial chairs, libraries.” Impelled by the general
movement thus infused into the body, the Masonic (French) Convention
of 1870, came unanimously to the following decision:— “The Masonry of
France associates itself to the forces at work in the country to render
education gratuitous, obligatory, and laic.”
We have all heard how far Belgium has gone in pursuit of these Masonic
aims at Infidel education. At one of the principal festivals of the
Belgian Freemasons a certain brother Boulard exclaimed, amidst universal
applause, “When ministers shall come to announce to the country that they
intend to regulate the education of the people I will cry aloud, ‘to me
a Mason, to me alone the question of education must be left; to me the
teaching; to me the examination; to me the solution.’”
Monsgr. Dupanloup also attacked the Masonic project of having
professional schools for young girls, such as are now advocated in the
Australian colonies and elsewhere in English-speaking countries. At
the time, the movement was but just being initiated in France, but it
could not deceive him. In a pamphlet, to which all the Bishops of France
adhered, and which was therefore called the Alarm of the Episcopate,
he showed clearly that these schools had two faces:—on one of which
was written “Professional Instruction for Girls,” and on the other,
“Away with Christianity in life and death.” “Without woman,” said
Brother Albert Leroy, at an International Congress of Masons, at Paris,
in 1867, “all the men united can do nothing”—nothing to effectually
de-Christianize the world.
The French “Education League” had the same object. At the time it was
introduced, the lodges were busy with getting up a statue to Voltaire.
And the _Monde Maçonnique_, speaking of both, said in April, 1867:—
“May the Education League and the statue of Brother Voltaire find in all
the lodges the most lively sympathy. We could not have two subscriptions
more in harmony: Voltaire, that is the destruction of prejudices and
superstitions: the Education League, that is the building up of a new
society founded solely upon science and upon instruction. All our
brethren understand the matter in this manner.”
It is needless to remark here that by “superstition” the _Monde
Maçonnique_ means religion, and, by “science and instruction,” these
acquirements, not only without, but directly hostile to religion. This
newspaper constantly teaches that all religions are so many darknesses,
that Masonry is the light; that God, the soul, the life to come, are
nothing but suppositions and fantasies, and that, as a consequence, a
man ought to be reared up independent of every kind of Christianity.
Therefore, it adds, “All masons ought to adhere in mass to _the league of
instruction, and the lodges ought to study in the peace of their temples
the best means to render it efficacious_.” In fact the Education League
and Masonry are declared to be identical by Brother Mace, who, at a
general banquet, drank:—“To the entrance of all Masons into the League.
To the entrance into Masonry of all those who form part of the League.”
“To the triumph of the light, the watchword common to the League and to
Masonry.”
In fine, the author of a history of Freemasonry, and one evidently well
up in its aims, Brother Goffin, writes as follows:—
“Whenever Masonry accords the entrance into its temple to a Hebrew, to
a Mahometan, to a Catholic, or to a Protestant, that is done on the
condition that he becomes a new man, that he abjures all his past errors,
_that he rejects the superstitions in which he was cradled from his
youth_. Without all this what has he to do in our Masonic assemblies?”
But as we have seen the great aim of the _Alta Vendita_, was to corrupt
woman. “As we cannot suppress her,” said _Vindex_ to _Nubius_, “let us
corrupt her with the Church.” The method best adapted for this was to
alienate her from religion by an infidel education. The Freemasons,
no doubt, obtained from the higher grades the word of command, and,
accordingly, proceeded to force, everywhere, the establishment of
superior schools for young girls where they might be surely deprived
of their religion and their morality. In the “Lodge of Beneficence
and Progress,” at Boulogne, on the 19th of July, 1867, “Massol” thus
spoke: “By means of instruction, women will become able to shake off the
clerical yoke, and to liberate themselves from the superstitions which
impede them from occupying themselves with an education in harmony with
the spirit of the age.” To give one proof only of this, where is the
English, German, or American woman, who to the two religious questions
which her own children can propose to her: “Who made the world?” “Do we
continue to live after death?” would dare to answer that she knew nothing
and that no one knew anything about it. Well, then, this boldness the
instructed French woman will possess.
[22] A curious proof of this fact is preserved in the records of Dublin
Castle, where, upon a return of the members and officers of Freemasonry,
as it is with us, having been asked for by the Government, the names of
the delegates from the Irish Lodges to various continental national Grand
Lodges were given. I do not place much value upon the fact as a means to
connect British Freemasonry with its kind on the Continent, because the
REAL SECRET was, as a rule, kept from British and Irish Masons. But the
intercourse had an immense effect in causing the vanguard cries of the
Continental lodges to find a fatal support from British Masons in and out
of Parliament. These delegates brought back high-sounding theories about
“education” without “denominationalism,” etc., etc., but they were never
trusted with the ultimate designs of the Continental directory to destroy
the Throne, the Constitution, and lastly, the very property of British
Masons. These designs are communicated only to reliable individuals, who
know full well the REAL SECRET of the sect—and keep it.
[23] The _Alta Vendita_ and the intellectual party in Masonry have for
a long time endeavoured to revive practices which Christianity did
away with, and which were distinctly Pagan. Amongst others they have
made every exertion to destroy the Christian respect for the dead, and
every respect for the dead which kept alive in the living the belief
in the immortality of the soul. Death is with man, a powerful means
to keep alive in him a wholesome fear of his Creator, and respect for
religion. Spiritual writers, following the advice of the Holy Ghost in
the Scriptures, “Remember thy last end and thou shalt never sin,” always
place before Christians the thought of death as the most wholesome
lesson in the spiritual life. The demon from the beginning tried to do
away with this salutary thought as the most opposed to his designs. When
Eve feared to eat the forbidden fruit it was because of the terror with
which death inspired her. The devil lied in telling her “No, ye shall not
die the death.” She believed the liar and the murderer. His followers
in the secret societies established by him, and which he keeps in such
unity of aim and action, second his desire to the utmost by doing away
with whatever may keep alive in man the thoughts of his last end and of
a future resurrection, and, of course, of judgment. Weishaupt taught
his disciples to look upon suicide as a praiseworthy means of flying
the horrors of death and present inconvenience. Cremation, instantly
destroying the terrors of corruption—the death’s head and cross bones—the
worst features in mortality, as exhibited in a corpse, is therefore
largely advocated by the secret societies on plausibly devised sanitary,
æsthetic, and economical grounds. But it is a pagan practice, opposed
to that followed ever since the creation of the world by all that had
the knowledge of the true God in the Primeval, Jewish, and Christian
dispensations. The Revolution in Italy has established at Rome, Milan,
and Naples means of cremating bodies, and advanced Freemasons, like
Garibaldi, have in their wills, directed that their bodies should be
cremated. A little reflection, however, will show that neither for rich
nor poor, for sanitary, for economical or any other reasons can cremation
be advocated in preference to burial. For besides the fact that the earth
which is always the best, safest, and readiest solvent for corruption,
may be had everywhere in abundance, and at a safe enough distance from
cities if so desired, there is the fact before us that the Roman poor and
slaves, were thrown into pits to save expense; while cremation, where
practised by the rich, led to most extravagant expenses and excesses.
Christians, when they find plausibly given, interesting notices of
cremation in journals of any kind, may be quite sure that the writer
who writes them is influenced by the secret sect, and these scribes are
found everywhere and find means to ventilate their ideas—unsuspected
by the proprietors—sometimes into journals professedly Catholic. They
are advocating, it is thought, a harmless sanitary arrangement not
condemned by the Church; but they are doing all the while, consciously
or unconsciously, the work of the secret Atheistic sect. As it is with
cremation, so it is with the eating of horse-flesh and other apparently
harmless practices advocated by the sectaries solely because in practice
or in theory, discountenanced by, or not practised by, Christians. When
in these days, a distinctive anti-Christian custom is seen advocated
without any urgent reason, in the press, now almost entirely in the hands
of members of the sect, and generally Jewish members, Christians may fear
that the cloven foot is in the matter. The cold water, the ridicule,
the contempt thrown upon religious observances, the attempt to rob them
of their purely Christian character, are other methods employed by the
sects to loosen the influence of Christianity. In opposition to these,
Christian people should carefully study to keep the joy of Christmas, the
penitential fasts, the sanctity of Holy Week, the splendour of Easter,
the feasts of God’s holy Mother and of the saints—to fill themselves, in
one word, with the Christian spirit of the Ages of Faith.
THE
SPOLIATION OF THE PROPAGANDA
A Lecture
DELIVERED IN EDINBURGH
BY
MONSIGNOR GEORGE F. DILLON, D.D.
MISSIONARY APOSTOLIC, SYDNEY.
DUBLIN
M. H. GILL & SON, 50 UPPER SACKVILLE STREET.
LONDON AND NEW YORK: BURNS AND OATES.
1885.
Nihil Obstat:
W. FORTUNE,
_Censor Theologus Deputatus_.
COLL. OM. SANCTORUM,
_Die iii. Mensis Maii, 1885._
Imprimatur:
GU. CAN. J. WALSH, D.D.,
_Vic. Cap. Dubliniensis_.
_Die iv. Mensis Maii, 1885._