As for the newspapers, they began to pay their respects to Morse’s sensational utterance soon after the latter’s fast day sermon came from the press. Thus “An American” contributed an article of generous length and of somewhat hostile tone to the Independent Chronicle of May 24 (1798), calling upon Morse to substantiate more fully the charge he had made. This pseudonymous contributor professed to have experienced great astonishment upon reading Morse’s sermon and finding that Robison’s Proofs alone had been relied upon as a source of information and authority. So serious a matter seemed to demand fuller evidence. Thinking that perhaps Dr. Morse had been imposed upon and that the work in question was possibly apocryphal, the writer had been constrained to search through foreign literary journals with a view to discovering how the “performance” attributed to Robison was regarded abroad. Thus employed he had come across an article in The Critical Review, or Annals of Literature, London, 1797, wherein he found severe strictures upon Robison’s volume. In view of this, “since the Doctors of Europe and America differ so widely in their estimation of its importance,” but a single course of honor and obligation would seem to be open to Dr. Morse. Having stood sponsor for the authenticity of such an extraordinary publication, he should now submit to the public decided proofs of the authority and correctness of the book in question.[646]
To this sharp challenge of “An American,” Morse was not indifferent. Replying to his critic in a subsequent issue of the Chronicle,[647] he expressed the hope that the public would not form its judgment respecting Robison’s volume before reading the same, or at least not until it shall have heard further from its “humble servant, Jedidiah Morse.” Meantime, if his readers shall be pleased to peruse the observations clipped from the New York Spectator by which his (Morse’s) letter to the Chronicle is accompanied they will learn that “there is at least one other person in the United States who has read this work, [and] whose opinion of it accords with” his own.[648]
A few days later, through the columns of the same paper,[649] Morse replied at greater length to the criticisms which “An American” had brought to public attention. That he had not “too hastily recommended Professor Robison’s late work” Morse regards as sufficiently demonstrated by the fact that he had had a copy of the book in his possession since the middle of the previous April. This he had examined with care, and he had satisfied himself that it was entitled to the recommendation he had given it in his fast day sermon. So far as the hostile criticism of the authors of The Critical Review is concerned, he has no doubt that their caricature of Robison’s book is to be construed as expressive of their determination to destroy its reputation and thus prevent its circulation, since it probably exposed and thwarted their favorite schemes. Besides, over against the contemptuous estimate that the authors of The Critical Review had seen fit to place upon Robison’s volume, Morse was able to oppose a very different judgment. The London Review of January, 1798, extracts from which he was glad to be permitted to offer in evidence,[650] placed an estimate upon Robison’s book which was both accurate and just. From this “An American” will be able to gather that “‘the Doctors in Europe and America’” do not “differ so widely in their estimation” of the importance of Robison’s volume as had been asserted. The observations that Morse is now offering to the public, it is his expectation, will serve to effect his personal justification; but if doubts still remain in the minds of any, he can only recommend as the best and perhaps the only sure means of dissolving them that such persons read Proofs of a Conspiracy for themselves.[651]
With respect to the inception of the Illuminati agitation in New England, the utterances of two other clergymen require attention. One of these, the Reverend David Tappan, professor of divinity at Harvard, in a discourse[652] delivered before the senior class of that institution on the 19th of June, 1798, cautioned the young people before him who were about to quit the life of the college to guard against the dangers of speculative principles, the pleasures of idleness and vicious indulgence, the degrading tendency of selfish sentiments, and “a more recent system, which … has for its ostensible object THE REGENERATION OF AN OPPRESSED WORLD TO THE BLISSFUL ENJOYMENT OF EQUAL LIBERTY.” This “more recent system,” Tappan explained, was the philosophy of the Order of the Illuminati.[653]
Drawing, as he professed, upon Morse’s fast day discourse and upon President Dwight’s sermons on infidel philosophy,[654] Tappan essayed a sketch of the objects and operations of the Illuminati, from the time of the founding of the order by Weishaupt to its supposed connections with the French Revolution, and the successes which it had enabled the French armies to accomplish through its intrigues “in various and distant parts of the world.” The conspiracy, it is true, might not be as extensive in its scope as had been claimed; but even so, the undoubted aspects of the situation were sufficient to afford ground for most grave apprehension. “If these and similar facts,” the clergyman continued, “do not evince so early and broad a system of wickedness as this writer[655] supposes (the truth of which in all its extent the speaker is not prepared to support), yet they indicate a real and most alarming plan of hostility against the dearest interests of man.”[656]
The question of the general credibility of the claims which Robison had made, as well as the implication of the Masons in the “conspiracy,” came in for special consideration by Tappan when his sermon was prepared for publication.[657] Concerning the former, the observation is made that the ridicule and incredulity which have opposed themselves to the report of a scheme so novel, extravagant, and diabolical, were to have been expected. At any rate, much of the opposition has come from men whose wishes and opinions have been offended, or from those who have shown themselves to be ardent friends of political and religious innovation. And with regard to the Masons, it is urged that the displeasure which certain worthy members of that fraternity have expressed against Robison ought not to be permitted to become so violent as to render impossible a candid and thorough examination of the proofs he has submitted. Robison’s opinion respecting the universal frivolity or mischievous tendency of the assemblies of the European Masons may be incorrect and injurious, and at the same time the leading facts upon which he founds that opinion may be true. To manifest a willingness to investigate with candor the proofs that have been presented, while continuing to hold in esteem “the approved characters of the principal Masons in this country, especially in the Eastern States,” this, Tappan advises, represents the middle course that his readers should attempt to steer.[658]
Thus it will appear that Tappan became an echo of Morse. As for Timothy Dwight, the contribution he made to the awakening of public interest in the subject of Illuminism requires somewhat stronger statement. In the person of the president of Yale this new idea of a definite and deep-laid conspiracy against religion and civil government encountered a highly sensitized mind. Upon the subjects of infidelity and the general irreligious tendencies of the times, Dwight had been speaking frequently and for years from his lecture-desk in the classroom and from his pulpit in the church. It is safe to say that among all the men of New England no man’s spirit was more persistently haunted by the fear that the forces of irreligion were in league to work general ruin to the institutions of society than his. When, therefore, on the occasion of the Fourth of July, 1798, the people of New Haven assembled to do honor to the day in listening to a sermon by the honored president of their college, it was to be expected that if the latter had any new information to impart or any new pronouncement to make respecting malign efforts that were making to plunge the world into irremediable scepticism and anarchy, he would seize the occasion that the day offered to arouse in his hearers a sense of the new perils which threatened. And President Dwight had new information and a new pronouncement to offer.
The subject which he chose to discuss on that Independence Day, and the text upon the elucidation of which he relied for the illumination of the subject, were in themselves calculated to excite concern. These were respectively, THE DUTY OF AMERICANS AT THE PRESENT CRISIS, and “Behold I come as a thief: Blessed is he that watcheth, and keepeth his garments, lest he walk naked, and they see his shame.” (Revelation xvi: 16.)[659] Having first explained the setting of the text, President Dwight then proceeded to define the thesis of his sermon in the following manner: “From this explanation it is manifest that the prediction consists of two great and distinct parts: the preparation for the overthrow of the Antichristian empire; and the embarkation of men in a professed and unusual opposition to God, and to his kingdom, accomplished by means of false doctrines, and impious teachers.”[660]
The first of these predictions, it was asserted, had been fulfilled in the repressive and secularizing measures that during the century had operated to weaken greatly the Catholic hierarchy and its chief political supports among the states of Europe.[661] The second was experiencing a fulfilment not less remarkable in the open and professed war against God and his kingdom, in which Voltaire, Frederick II, the Encyclopedists, and the Societies of the Illuminati had confederated.[662]