The other address was different. Masonic Brother Charles Jackson, addressing the members and friends of St. Peter’s Lodge, Newburyport, Massachusetts, showed no disposition to mince words with respect to the detractors of Freemasonry.[879] Robison was reprobated by him for launching “illiberal sarcasms” against the fraternity,[880] and particularly for making out the Masonic lodges to be “hot-beds of sedition and impiety,” which the orator indignantly averred they were not.[881] It was granted that certain profligate and abandoned characters, as Robison claimed, had assumed the cloak of Masonry, with a view of shrouding their infernal plans under pretences of philanthropy and benevolence; but these men soon threw off this cloak, and there was no reason why Masonry should be sacrificed on their account.[882] The charges of atheism and unpatriotic spirit among the members of the fraternity were repelled with equal warmth by Jackson. As with Harris, these calumnies were countered, the charge of atheism by the fact that many of the clergy were members of the order, and the charge of unpatriotic spirit by the fact that Washington was the “illustrious brother” of American Masons.[883]
To a very limited extent the press was resorted to, in order that New England Masonry might have a chance to square itself before the public. The call for specific evidence that was made upon Morse, as voiced in the Massachusetts Mercury of July 27, 1798, and Morse’s prolix but ineffective effort to meet the situation this created, have already been noticed.[884] In the course of the newspaper discussion referred to, the name of another prominent Mason of Massachusetts, the Reverend Josiah Bartlett, was drawn into the controversy.[885] To Morse’s somewhat unmanly plaint that “by necessary implication” he had been accused by the Massachusetts Masons before the President as being under the influence of unfounded prejudices, Bartlett made the conciliatory, though artful, response that the address of the Grand Lodge, to which Morse referred, was designed merely as a manly avowal of the true principles of Freemasonry. It was not necessary to believe, he continued, that they were influenced by irritation or resentment in making the Address, nor that Dr. Morse had hostile designs in the delivery and publication of his fast sermon.[886]
Such language, however, was much too mild and unduly exonerative for the “Author of the Worcester Charge.” His aroused spirit required that censure should be imposed. Morse had been guilty of a base injustice; it was right that this fact should frankly be published to the world. Accordingly, the Massachusetts Mercury of August 10, 1798, contained a vigorous statement of the case of Masonry against Morse, from Bentley’s pen. The following will suffice to indicate the author’s spirit:
The notice taken of the American Geographer in the late Charge,[887] was on account of his zeal, in his public character, to give authority to a wicked and mischievous Book. That he did not understand the Charge he has proved in his attempt to apply it, and that he should not understand it, is easy to be conceived from the Strictures already published upon his Compilations, and from opinions of him, both at home and abroad. On a proper occasion, these opinions may be collected and published.[888]
Still refusing to depart from the pathway of amiability and clerical courtesy, Bartlett returned to the discussion of the subject of Illuminism in its relation to American Freemasonry, in the Mercury of September 7, 1798. In cumbrous sentences the appearance of Robison’s book in this country was reviewed; the best of motives were imputed to its author and his supporters in America; but stress, very gentle stress, to be sure, was laid upon the question whether the Illuminati, in any form or other, had branches in this country. “If,” Bartlett urged, “there is any citizen in the United States who can prove this, it is a duty which he really owes to God and his country, to come forward, ‘as a faithful watchman,’ with his documents.” As for himself, he was fully persuaded that if the Masonic institution could be implicated fairly in the conspiracy, then the doors of every lodge ought to be flung wide open, and Masonry henceforth held in just derision and contempt.[889]
This seemed to open the way for such a polite and harmless handling of the subject as Morse coveted. In like spirit he replied to the foregoing.[890] He rejoiced in the candid utterances of his worthy friend. Bartlett’s acceptance of the existence of the Illuminati persuaded him to hope that opposition to Robison would now soon cease. Had the latter’s work not been opposed in the first place, he entertained no doubt that Freemasonry in the United States would not have been injured. While disclaiming all intention of pursuing a controversial course, he would, however, undertake an investigation to determine whether or not there were societies of the Illuminati in this country.[891]
A belated promise, to say the least, and one that found a certain belated fulfilment in Morse’s fast sermon of the following spring.[892] Before turning to consider the effect of that sermon on Masonic thought, one other Masonic disclaimer of 1798 requires attention.