Blanchard J (anti-masonic) - Scotch Rite Masonry Illustrated Part I

MANIACAL COUNTENANCE OF FALSE woRsHn’I’Ens. 235HISTORICAL ANALYSISTENTH DEGREE OR MASTER ELECT OFFIFTEEN.The Force of a False RelIgion—Killing the Remaining Assassins of Hiram—Swearing to Assassinate Secedera—To Repiac~ Popery on the Throneof England.“There ye wise saints, behold your light, your star.Ye would be dupes and victims, and ye are.So shall my votaries wheresoe er they raveProclaim that heaven took back the saint It gave;That Eve hut vsniahed troqi the earth awhileTo come again with bright unclouded smiie~So shall they hnild me altars in their seal.Where knaves shall minister and fools shall kneel—veiled Prophet of Ehorasasa.When Joseph Snzith lay shot in Carthage jail, mensupposed Mormonism was done. They miscalculatedthe force of a false religion. It was not intellect, reason,worldly prospects, or popularity that saved it. Atthat time it cou]d offer neither. “The Lord lookethon the heart,” and Satan does the same, when he desiresto bring men to himself.Con~idered as addressed to human intelligence, nothingwould seem more contemptible than this Tenth Degree,and those immediate]y preceding and following it.And yet these degrees were culled from a mass of degreeswhich overspread France in 1754, which weresent to this country by a Jew who had abandoned J’udaismCor the lodge-religion in 1761. And, after fortyyears’ struggle, during the eventful period of our revolution,war and independence, which engrossed all mindsfor the time and hung doubtful as in a wavering balance,the lodge then blazed out into this Scotch Rite ofthirty-three degrees, at Charleston, S. C., in 1801; afterthe degree was invented “to make room for the elevationof others to the degree of the Elect of Fifteen.” Thesame reason is given in Note 98. Conquerors and swindlersmust go on. Ramsay and his Jesuits had created amarket for iww degrees and they must supply it. Standingarmies are kept up by ambitious soldiers expectingpromotion. The old craft, Masonry, had been swungfrom its moorings. The Jesuits had added “Select Master,Perfect Master, Intimate Secretary, Provost andJudge, Intendant of the Building, Elect of Nine, ofFifteen” and now they raise twelve of the fifteen to makeroom for “other deserving brethren of the lower degrees.”(Note 98.) And as each upper degree issworn to secrecy from the next and all below, it matteredlittle what the grade was made of, so that it was agrade.But then there must ever be, besides this, in a falsereligion, a putting the mind in a posture to receive influencefrom devils. This every degree has, whetherdull or sprightly. The rap which opens the lodge putsthe members in communication (en rapport) withSatan, and they became mesmerized by him; each inproportion to the inward consent or prayer which theyyield to him. Observing men can see, in the faces ofnuns, Masons and mediums, an obvious similarity of expression,or of no-expression which is maniacal or demoniac.And the power which produces that no-expression,is the power which keeps up the lodge.The Monks of all ages have shown by their grosserrors and unclean lives that they havc communed withand been influenced or posscssed by uncican spirits. Tnthe early centuries there was a class of Monks in Mt.Atltos, called by a Greek name which meant “navel.