In Révélations d’un Franc-maçon au lit de mort, pièce authentique, publicé, par M. de Hallet (Courtrai, 1826, p. 10), we find the following: “We must restore man to his primeval rights, no longer recognizing rank and dignity—two things the mere sight of which offends the eye of man and wounds his self-love. Obedience is a mere chimera, and has no place in the wise plans of Providence.”
In the Astræa, Taschenbuch für Freimaurer, von Bruder Sydow (1845), an orator thus speaks: “That which is destined to destruction must in the course of things be destroyed; and if human powers resist this law, at the behest of fate, a stronger power will appear upon the scene to carry out the eternal decrees of Providence. The Reformation of the church, as well as the French Revolution, proves the existence of this law.… Revolution is a crisis necessary to development.”
The Révélations says: “The poison must be neutralized by means of its antidote, revolution must succeed to obedience, vengeance follow upon effeminacy, power must grapple with power, and the reign of superstition yield before that of the one true natural religion.”
Barruel, who had been a master Mason, states that the oath administered to him was: “My brother, are you prepared to execute every command you may receive from the Grand Master, even should contrary orders be laid on you by king or emperor, or any other ruler whatever?”
“The grade of Kadosch”—the thirtieth grade—writes Barruel (p. 222), “is the soul of Freemasonry, and the final object of its plots is the reintroduction of absolute liberty and equality through the destruction of all royalty and the abrogation of all religious worship.”
“Socialism, Freemasonry, and communism have, after all, a common origin” (The Latomia—an organ of the craft—vol. xii. p. 237).
Le Libertaire, a Masonic journal published in this city, had the following in 1858: “The Libertaire knows no country but that which is common to all. He is a sworn foe to restraints of every kind. He hates the boundaries of countries; he hates the boundaries of fields, houses, workshops; he hates the boundaries of family.”
Is it within the power of the human mind to conceive of any possible individual or spiritual incarnation more deeply, vividly, and distinctly branded with the note-mark or sign of Antichrist, given to us by the Holy Spirit some two thousand years ago, by which we might recognize him when he appeared—“the lawless one,” “spurning authority”—ὁ ἄνομος, qui contemnunt dominationem?
And when we add to this, the one special and most wicked and lawless characteristic of the “craft”—its portentous mystery—to our thinking, they must willingly, and of set purpose, close their eyes who fail to detect in it the very Antichrist whom the apostle declares shall be manifested in the last days, after the apostasy, and whom he designates by the epithet τὸ μυστήριον τῆς ἀνομίας—“the mystery of lawlessness”—which he tells us had even then, at the very cradle of the church, begun to put in movement its long conspiracy against the salvation of mankind: τὸ γὰρ μυστηριον ἢδη ενεργεῖται τῆς ἀνομίας—“for the mystery of lawlessness is even now already working.”
No sooner was Christ born than his infant life was sought; no sooner did he begin to teach than “the ancient serpent” sought his ruin; just before the triumph of his resurrection the enemy of mankind seemed to have finally and completely triumphed in his crucifixion; no sooner had his church, brought to life by his resurrection, begun her work of saving mankind than the devil was at work with his “mystery of lawlessness” for her destruction. All along it is Antichrist dogging the steps of Christ; before the second coming of Christ there is to be the second coming of Antichrist; before the final triumph over evil and revelation of the sons of God, Antichrist is to have that his last open and avowed manifestation—ἀποκάλυψις—and success, which the craft of Freemasonry is already so far on the road to compassing.