The foregoing abstract takes account of all the important points in the text of Morse’s anniversary thanksgiving sermon. The reader will not need instruction as to the commonplace character of Morse’s pulpit performance. The distinguishing character of the production, however, is not to be sought in the sermon proper, but in the astonishing array of supplementary material by which it was accompanied when it appeared in its printed form. This material consisted of numerous foot notes and a bulky appendix of some fifty pages. The foot notes frequently commented upon passages in the works of Robison and Barruel. Since they throw no light upon the fundamental questions at issue, we may pass them by. One, however, was unique; and because of its suggestiveness for the future trend of public discussion respecting the Illuminati, it must be cited in full.
The probable existence of Illuminism in this country was asserted in my Fast Discourse of May last. The following fact, related by a very respectable divine, while it confirms what is above asserted, shews that my apprehensions were not without foundation. “In the northern parts of this state [Massachusetts] as I am well informed, there has lately appeared, and still exists under a licentious leader, a company of beings who discard the principles of religion, and the obligations of morality, trample on the bonds of matrimony, the separate rights of property, and the laws of civil society, spend the sabbath in labour and divertion, as fancy dictates; and the nights in riotous excess and promiscuous concubinage, as lust impels. Their number consists of about forty, some of whom are persons of reputable abilities, and once, of decent characters. That a society of this description, which would disgrace the natives of Caffraria, should be formed in this land of civilization and Gospel light, is an evidence that the devil is at this time gone forth, having great influence, as well as great wrath.” Cf. a Sermon on “the Dangers of the times, especially from a lately discovered Conspiracy against Religion and Government. By Rev. Joseph Lathrop, D. D., of West Springfield.”[713]
This foot note speaks for itself. The Appendix, or supplement of Morse’s sermon, was made up of a curious mixture of heterogeneous documents, such as an original survey of the history of the United States from the time that the Federal government was established, extracts from the confidential correspondence which passed between French agents in this country and the French government,[714] and extracts from the correspondence of various public characters in the United States, all tending to enforce the point that from the beginning of the relations between our government and that of France, the controlling aim and spirit of the latter had been to work despicable and ruinous intrigue.[715]
All of this, it may be said, was fairly typical of the pabulum which Federalist leaders were regularly serving up to the people in 1798, and signified little or nothing concerning the existence of French conspirators wearing the Illuminati brand who may, or may not, have been at work in America at the time.
One section of the Appendix, however, supplied some evidence of a definite effort to leave generalities and deal intimately with the point at issue. In this section[716] Morse sought to connect the Illuminati with “the Jacobin Clubs instituted by Genet.”[717] Like their sister organizations in France they had been constituted after the manner and with the principles of the European Illuminati. The fact that the members of these American organizations have been the leading disseminators of the principles of Illuminism in this country, as well as the circulators of all those publications, like Paine’s Age of Reason, whose object is to discredit and throw contempt upon the Christian religion, clearly fixes their status as “the apostles of Illuminism.”[718] Frowned upon by the Federal government, these American organizations have ceased to act openly; “but, like their parent society in Bavaria which, when suppressed under one form, was soon revived again under the name of the German Union,”[719] so their offspring in the United States now hypocritically mask themselves under the name of The American Society of United Irishmen.[720]
Taken by itself, it would be impossible to state how favorably this presentation of the case against Illuminism impressed the public mind.[721] But as a matter of fact, on the occasion of the Massachusetts anniversary thanksgiving referred to, Morse was by no means compelled to bear his testimony alone. By the time that occasion came round, the subject of Illuminism had solicited the attention and concern of the Federalist clergy generally; on which account it happened that a considerable amount of clerical artillery was unlimbered and trained upon the new foe.
At Haverhill, the Reverend Abiel Abbott, in language emphatic, if somewhat high-flown, voiced his alarm: