When the reader considers all these circumstances, he will abate of that surprise which naturally affects a Briton, when he reads accounts of conventions for discussing and fixing the dogmatic tenets of Free Masonry. The perfect freedom, civil and religious, which we enjoy in this happy country, being familiar to every man, we indulge it with calmness and moderation, and secret assemblies hardly differ from the common meetings of friends and neighbours. We do not forget the expediency of civil subordination, and of those distinctions which arise from secure possession of our rights, and the gradual accumulation of the comforts of life in the families of the sober and industrious. These have, by prudence and a respectable œconomy, preserved the acquisitions of their ancestors. Every man feels in his own breast the strong call of nature to procure for himself and his children, by every honest and commendable exertion, the means of public consideration and respect. No man is so totally without spirit, as not to think the better of his condition when he is come of creditable parents, and has creditable connections; and without thinking that he is in any respect generous, he presumes that others have the same sentiments, and therefore allows the moderate expression of them, without thinking it insolence or haughtiness. All these things are familiar, are not thought of, and we enjoy them as we enjoy ordinary health, without perceiving it. But in the same manner as a young man who has been long confined by sickness, exults in returning health, and is apt to riot in the enjoyment of what he so distinctly feels; so those who are under continual check in open society, feel this emancipation in those hidden assemblies, and indulge with eagerness in the expression of sentiments which in public they must smother within their own breast. Such meetings, therefore, have a zest that is very alluring, and they are frequented with avidity. There is no country in Europe where this kind of enjoyment is so poignant as in Germany. Very insignificant principalities have the same rank in the General Federation with very extensive dominions. The internal constitution of each petty state being modelled in nearly the same manner, the official honours of their little courts become ludicrous and even farcical. The Geheim Hofrath, the Hofmareschal, and all the Kammerhers of a Prince, whose dominions do not equal the estates of many English Squires, cause the whole to appear like the play of children, and must give frequent occasion for discontent and ridicule. Mason Lodges even keep this alive. The fraternal equality professed in them is very flattering to those who have not succeeded in the scramble for civil distinctions. Such persons become the most zealous Masons, and generally obtain the active offices in the Lodges, and have an opportunity of treating with authority persons whom in public society they must look up to with some respect.
These considerations account, in some measure, for the importance which Free Masonry has acquired in Germany. For a long while the hopes of learning some wonderful secret made a German Baron think nothing of long and expensive journies in quest of some new degree. Of late, the cosmo-political doctrines encouraged and propagated in the Lodges, and some hopes of producing a Revolution in society, by which men of talents should obtain the management of public affairs, seem to be the cause of all the zeal with which the order is still cherished and promoted. In a periodical work, published at Neuwied, called Algemein Zeitung der Freymaurerey, we have the list of the Lodges in 1782, with the names of the Office-bearers. Four-fifths of these are clergymen, professors, persons having offices in the common law-courts, men of letters by trade, such as reviewers and journalists, and other pamphleteers; a class of men, who generally think that they have not attained that rank in society to which their talents entitle them, and imagine that they could discharge the important offices of the state with reputation to themselves and advantage to the public.
The miserable uncertainty and instability of the Masonic faith, which I described above, was not altogether the effect of mere chance, but had been greatly accelerated by the machinations of Baron Knigge, and some other cosmo-political Brethren whom he had called to his assistance. Knigge had now formed a scheme for uniting the whole Fraternity, for the purpose of promoting his Utopian plan of universal benevolence in a state of liberty and equality. He hoped to do this more readily by completing their embarrassment, and showing each system how infirm its foundation was, and how little chance it had of obtaining a general adherence. The Stricten Observanz had now completely lost its credit, by which it had hoped to get the better of all the rest. Knigge therefore proposed a plan to the Lodges of Frankfort and Wetzlar, by which all the systems might, in some measure, be united, or at least be brought to a state of mutual forbearance and intercourse. He proposed that the English system should be taken for the ground-work, and to receive all and only those who had taken the three symbolical degrees, as they were now generally called. After thus guarding this general point of faith, he proposed to allow the validity of every degree or rank which should be received in any Lodge, or be made the character of any particular system. These Lodges having secured the adherence of several others, brought about a general convention at Willemsbad in Hainault, where every different system should communicate its peculiar tenets. It was then hoped, that after an examination of them all, a constitution might be formed, which should comprehend every thing that was most worthy of selection, and therefore be far better than the accommodating system already described. By this he hoped to get his favourite scheme introduced into the whole Order, and Free Masons made zealous Citizens of the World. I believe he was sincere in these intentions, and did not wish to disturb the public peace. The convention was accordingly held, and lasted a long while, the deputies consulting about the frivolities of Masonry, with all the seriousness of state ambassadors. But there was great shyness in their communications; and Knigge was making but small progress in his plan, when he met with another Mason, the Marquis of Constanza, who in an instant converted him, and changed all his measures, by showing him that he (Knigge) was only doing by halves what was already accomplished by another Society, which had carried it to its full extent. They immediately set about undoing what he had been occupied with, and heightened as much as they could the dissentions already sufficiently great, and, in the mean time, got the Lodges of Frankfort and Wetzlar, and several others, to unite, and pick out the best of the things they had obtained by the communications from the other systems, and they formed a plan of what they called, the Eclectic or Syncritic Masonry of the United Lodges of Germany. They composed a constitution, ritual, and catechism, which has merit, and is indeed the completest body of Free Masonry that we have.
Such was the state of this celebrated and mysterious Fraternity in Germany in 1776. The spirit of innovation had seized all the Brethren. No man could give a tolerable account of the origin, history, or object of the Order, and it appeared to all as a lost or forgotten mystery. The symbols seemed to be equally susceptible of every interpretation, and none of these seemed entitled to any decided preference.
CHAP. II.
The Illuminati.
I have now arrived at what I should call the great epoch of Cosmo-politism, the scheme communicated to Baron Knigge by the Marchese di Constanza. This obliges me to mention a remarkable Lodge of the Eclectic Masonry, erected at Munich in Bavaria in 1775, under the worshipful Master, Professor Baader. It was called The Lodge Theodore of Good Counsel. It had its constitutional patent from the Royal York at Berlin, but had formed a particular system of its own, by instructions from the Loge des Chevaliers Bienfaisants at Lyons, with which it kept up a correspondence. This respect to the Lodge at Lyons had arisen from the preponderance acquired in general by the French party in the convention at Willemsbad. The deputies of the Rosaic Lodges, as well as the remains of the Templars, and Stricten Observanz, all looking up to this as the mother Lodge of what they called the Grand Orient de la France, consisting in (in 1782) of 266 improved Lodges united under the D. de Chartres. Accordingly the Lodge at Lyons sent Mr. Wilermooz as deputy to this convention at Willemsbad. Refining gradually on the simple British Masonry, the Lodge had formed a system of practical morality, which it asserted to be the aim of genuine Masonry, saying, that a true mason, and a man of upright heart and active virtue, are synonimous characters, and that the great aim of Free Masonry is to promote the happiness of mankind by every mean in our power. In pursuance of these principles, the Lodge Theodore professedly occupied itself with œconomical, statistical, and political matters, and not only published from time to time discourses on such subjects by the Brother Orator, but the Members considered themselves as in duty bound to propagate and inculcate the same doctrines out of doors.
Of the zealous members of the Lodge Theodore the most conspicuous was Dr. Adam Weishaupt, Professor of Canon Law in the University of Ingolstadt. This person had been educated among the Jesuits; but the abolition of their order made him change his views, and from being their pupil, he became their most bitter enemy. He had acquired a high reputation in his profession, and was attended not only by those intended for the practice in the law-courts, but also by young gentlemen at large in their course of general education; and he brought numbers from the neighbouring states to this university, and gave a ton to the studies of the place. He embraced with great keenness this opportunity of spreading the favorite doctrines of the Lodge, and his auditory became the seminary of Cosmo-politism. The engaging pictures of the possible felicity of a society where every office is held by a man of talents and virtue, and where every talent is set in a place fitted for its exertion, forcibly catches the generous and unsuspecting minds of youth, and in a Roman Catholic state, far advanced in the habits of gross superstition (a character given to Bavaria by its neighbours) and abounding in monks and idle dignitaries, the opportunities must be frequent for observing the inconsiderate dominion of the clergy, and the abject and indolent submission of the laity. Accordingly Professor Weishaupt says, in his Apology for Illuminatism, that Deism, Infidelity, and Atheism are more prevalent in Bavaria than in any country he was acquainted with. Discourses, therefore, in which the absurdity and horrors of superstition and spiritual tyranny were strongly painted, could not fail of making a deep impression. And during this state of the minds of the auditory the transition to general infidelity and irreligion is so easy, and so inviting to sanguine youth, prompted perhaps by a latent wish that the restraints which religion imposes on the expectants of a future state might be found, on enquiry, to be nothing but groundless terrors, that I imagine it requires the most anxious care of the public teacher to keep the minds of his audience impressed with the reality and importance of the great truths of religion, while he frees them from the shackles of blind and absurd superstition. I fear that this celebrated instructor had none of this anxiety, but was satisfied with his great success in the last part of this task, the emancipation of his young hearers from the terrors of superstition. I suppose also that this was the more agreeable to him, as it procured him the triumph over the Jesuits, with whom he had long struggled for the direction of the university.