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

154 A3SOLUTE SECRECY AND ABSOLUTE DE5PO7I5M. CARICATURE OF CHRIST’S RESURRECTION. 155similar quotations, asserting over and over again, thatRamsag and the Jesuits manufactured the first of these“ineffable” degrees; that they formed the basis of “TheRite of Perfection” of twenty-five degrees formed byDe Bonneville ~n the Clermont Jesuit College. Theywere four years later adopted by “The Council of Emperors,”1758, patented by them to Morin in 1761, sentby him to Charleston, S. -C., and by Morin and othersenlarged, by the addition of eight 4egrees, into thepresent Scotch Rite of 330, which is really the Masonryof our teniples today. Even Mackey, who hates theJesuits, wineingly acknowledges and records the abovefacts. (Encyc. Art. Stuart Masonry.)Thus by clear, abundant Masouie authority, it isproved that the substratum and basis of AmericanMasonry was the work of Papists, and that of JesuitPapists, a society so destructive to civil order thatin the year 1773, a Papal Bull was issued dissolvingthe whole Jesuit order at the demand of France,Spain, Portugal, Parma, Naples and Austria; an orderwhose two main pillars are the same as those of thelodge system viz: Absolute secrecy and absolute despotismand control; not only over Protestantism butover every gQvernment and every institution. This ledihe above Popish governments to demand its dissolutionin 1773. And this knowledge of its origin confirms thewords of W. H. Seward that Masonry “seeks the destructionof every government which it can not control.”This also explains the degrees we are considering,this Eighth degree included. If the story of it weretranslated from its night drama and put in a newspaperit would not be read on account of its insipidity anddestitution of merit. Priests do not rely on the intelligence of the people, but on their superstition, and onthe supernatural power which inhabits superstition.And what but the most dense superstition could or caninduce a crowd to regard and address the chairman ofits night-meeting the club as “Thrice Puissant.” To puton “white aprons lined with red and bordered withgreen ;“ to lead in a candidate bare-footed; all this andmore merely to appoint a superintendent of a building,in place of our “dear Master, Hiram Abiff.”The only use and efficacy of such stuff is to furnish amurdered Hiram, as a counterfeit for a crucified Christ;to raise him from the dcad as a ridiculous caricature ofChrist’s resurrection, “by the strong grip of Judah’slion,” as a travesty on Christ’s word, that He had powerto raise himself from the dead. “I have power to layit down and I have power to take it again.” Threeclasses of minds would be interested in such a travesty;infidels, priests and devils. And these three are interestedin all religious imposture. Their dupes canscarcely be said to be interested; they are “bewitched”rather, as with the sorecries of Simon Magus. Gazingon, and listening to a Roinish mass in an unknowntongue; unknown often to the priest who reads it, thepeople look solemn it is true, but it is the stolid solemnityof cattle in a slaughter yard. But the Mason is belowthe Papist in this; that, at the close of the solemnfanfaronade, he is sworn to conceal it.We have seen from Masonic authors, that Jesuitismis the mother of Masonry; and that Masonry i~ as likeJesuitism as the Image is like the Beast. And we knowwhere this Jesuitism came from. It was born at night,in a cave near the little town of Enresa, in Spain. Theignorant Cavalier who fancied or feigned that God met