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

378 TRAVESTIES CHRISTIAN ORDINANCES. TEE CATACOMES OF A NEW WORSHIP. 37~It requires but a glanee at this plain paragraph to seethat it is a seoff at the Jehovah of the Old Testament,who is the Jesos Christ of the New. And its ignoranceequals its impudenee. The name of this same “SublimeTeaeher” is dropped from the Scriptures quoted .in theLodge, in many of the degrees; and his religion, on thealtar of the lodge, is put on a level with the worshipsof “four-footed beasts and ereeping things.” See Note155 of this degree. And as to Christ teaehiing a “God ofLove only;” “The Seriptures,” whieh Christ endorsed,teaehi that “Justice and judgment are the habitation ofHis throne !“ Nay, this same “Sublime Teaeher” saidof sornc: “These shall go away into everlasting punishment.”2. This degree makes a false use of the Deealogue,and a profane use of the Lord’s Supper.~Vhilethe eandidate is led into and around the lodge,the Thrice Puissant reads the ten Commandments;knowing, as he must, that the Deenlogue is not the Mason’slaw of life, but the Lex Naturw or Law of Nature.(See the Ritual, page 812.) Maekey says: “The ten(‘onzniandments are not obligatory upon a Mason!” (SeeArt Decalogue.) And on page 319 of the Ritual, theThriee Puissant and Candidate take solemnly conseeraledbread, and drink wine from a eup. The obviousand intended effect of whieh must be to degrade theDeealogue, and rival and run down Christ’s commemoratii’esupper.3. Then the eandidate is made to swear (p. 817), notto “take arms,” or “enter into any conspiracy against hi.country.” Nevertheless the ten Lodges of the Districtof Columbia all entered into sueh a conspiracy before theRebellion, and Pike, Sovereign Grand Commander ofthis Rite, initiated, in Federal Lodge, Washington, andfought Indians against the Union at Pea Ridge, Ark.And years before, Southern Lodges, and Charleston, theseat and headquarters of the Supreme Council, werecombined in a conspiracy to break up the country; andall the while this oath was being administered by and toconspirators! to quiet the fears of Northern Masons andinsure the suceess of the Rebellion. The effect of suchwholesale fraud and sanetimonious false swearing,whether intended or not, could only be to make Christ’sreligion of sincerity and truth, an impossibility Withinits influence.4. But that the intention of the framers of this degreewas to make a clean riddance of Christianity is provedby history, a~d is evident from the degree itself.The eminent French patriot, poet and historian, Lamartine,writing of the times when this degree and itsSeottish Rite originated, says: “The Spirit of Philosophyhad organized oeeult associations after the imageof Freemasonry.” “Between the initiated and existinginstitutions, the war was concealed, but the moredeadly.” “These lodges were the ealaeombs of a newWorship.”—Htat. the Girondists, vol. 1, p. 188.What that new underground religion was, is seen onthe preceding page: “Frederiek the Great was thecorrupter of the Empire.” ~‘ * * “Military men,edneated in Ihe Sehool of Frederick, aeademies modeledafter the genius of Voltaire; colonies of Jews enrichedby war, and Freneh refugees formed the public mind.”p. 187. And again on the next page: “The sect ofIlluminees, founded and guided by Weishaupt, wasspreading in Germany in eonjunetion with the Freemaeonsand the Rosicrucians, p. 187.This testimony of Lamartine is mild, impartial, reliable,and concurrent with all the sound writers of thatday. And never, perhaps, since the march of time be-