Dr. Dupuy, indeed, informs us of the corrupt portion of the Order of Templars, that “Receptores dicebant illis quos recipiebant, Christum non esse verum Deum, et ipsum fuisse falsum, non fuisse passum pro redemptione humani generis, sed pro sceleribus suis”—“They who received said to those whom they received that Christ was not really God; that he was himself false, and did not suffer for the redemption of the human race, but for his own crimes.”
In harmony with all this was the offensively blasphemous utterance of Mr. Frothingham at the Masonic hall in this city some weeks ago, at which the New York Tablet expressed a just indignation—an indignation which must have been shared by all who believe, in any way or form, in Jesus Christ, Redeemer of the world: “Tom Paine has keyed my moral being up to a higher note than the Jesus of Nazareth.”
The argument we have advanced seems to us to be convincing enough as it stands. Could we have taken a historical survey of the μυστήριον τῆς ανομίας in the two hemispheres from the “apostasy” up to the present time, but especially during the last fifteen years, it would have acquired the force of a logical demonstration. The limits to which we are necessarily restrained in a monthly periodical put this completely out of our power. Whoever he may be who has intelligently appreciated the political events of the latter period will be able to supply the deficiency for himself. Merely hinting, therefore, at the impossibility of getting anti-Freemason appreciations of contemporary events before the public—well known to all whose position has invited them to that duty—as an illustration of the plan of action laid down in the second clause of the above summary; at the recent unconcealed advocacy of the “craft” by the New York Herald, and the more cautious conversion of the London Times,[41] of that in the third; at the ribaldry of the press under Freemason influence directed against the bishops, clergy, and prominent laymen, as well as against the Pope; the nicknames they are for ever coining, such as “clericals,” “ultramontanes,” “retrogrades,” “reactionists”; their blasphemous travesties of the solemnities of religion in theatres and places of public resort, and so on, of that in the fourth and fifth; at the world-wide effort to induce states to exclude religious influences from the education of youth, of that of the sixth; at Victor Emanuel, the Prince of Wales, etc., of that of the seventh; at the assassination of Count Rossi at the beginning of the present Pope’s reign, the quite recent assassination of the President of Ecuador, the repeated attempts at assassination of Napoleon III., the deposition of so many sovereigns, even of the Pope himself—so far as it was in their power to depose him—of that of the eighth; and at the whole area of Europe strewn with the wreck of revolution, of that of the ninth; we pass on to the last two marks of Antichrist with which we brand the Freemason confraternity—Qui solvit Jesum (Who abolishes Christ) and Qui adversatur et extollitur supra omne quod dicitur Deus, aut quod colitur, ita ut in templo Dei sedeat ostendens se tanquam sit Deus (Who opposes himself to, and raises himself above, all that is called God, or is worshipped, so that he may sit in the temple of God, making himself out to be, as it were, God).
Barruel, who was completely versed in Freemasonry, and who had been himself a Mason, states (p. 222) that “the grade of Kadosch 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.” And he backs this statement by a tragic incident in the history of a friend of his, who, because he was a Rosicrucian, fancied himself to be “in possession of the entire secret of Freemasonry.” It is too long to admit of our quoting it. The reader anxious for information we refer to The Secret Warfare of Freemasonry (pp. 142-144).
Le Libertaire, a New York paper, in the interests of Freemasonry, about the year 1858 had the following: “As far as religion is concerned, the Libertaire has none at all; he protests against every creed; he is an atheist and materialist, openly denying the existence of God and of the soul.”
In 1793 belief in God was a crime prohibited in France under pain of death.
Those of our readers who have some acquaintance with modern philosophy we need here only remind of the natura naturans and natura naturata of Spinoza, born a Jew, but expelled from the synagogue for his advocacy of these principles of Freemasonry: “The desire to find truth is a noble impulse, the search after it a sacred avocation; and ample field for this is offered by both the mysterious rites peculiar to the craft and those of the Goddess Isis, adored in our temples as the wisest and fairest of deities.”—Vienna Freemason’s Journal (3d year, No. 4, p. 78 et seq.)
In the Rappel, a French organ of Freemasonry, was the following passage a few weeks ago: “God is nothing but a creation of the human mind. In a word, God is the ideal. If I am accused of being an atheist, I should reply I prefer to be an atheist, and have of God an idea worthy of him, to being a spiritualist and make of God a being impossible and absurd.”
In short, the craft is so far advanced in its course of triumph as to have at length succeeded in familiarizing the public ear with the denial of the existence of a God; so that it is now admitted as one amongst the “open questions” of philosophy.
Our illustration of the crowning indications of the satanic mark of Antichrist afforded by the Freemasons—the sitting in the temple of God, so as to make himself out to be, as it were, God—will be short but decisive.