Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

326 PROFESSOR ROBISON'S VIEWS
(I think chiefly by Orleans and himself,) which afterwards
became the Jacobin club. In short, we may assert with
confidence, that the Mason lodges in France were the hot*
beds, where the seeds were sown and tenderly reared, of
all the pernicious doctrines which soon after choked every
moral and religious cultivation, and have made the society
worse than a waste; have made it a noisome marsh of human
corruption, filled with every rank and poisonous weed.
" These lodges were frequented by persons of all ranks,
and of every profession. The/idle and the frivolous found
amusement, and glittering things to tickle their satiated fancies;
There they became the dupes of the declamations
of the crafty and licentious Abb6s, and writers.of every denomination.
Mutual encouragement in the indulgence of
hazardous thoughts, and opinions which flatter our wishes
or propensities, is a hire which few minds can resist I believe
that most men have felt this in some period of their
lives. I can find no other way for accounting for the company
that I have seen in a Mason lodge. The lodge de la
Parfaite Intelligence, at Liege, contained, in December
1770, the prince bishop and the greatest part of his chapter;
and all the office-bearers were dignitaries of the
church; yet a discourse given by the brother orator was as
poignant a satire on superstition and credulity, as if it had
been written by Voltaire. It was under the auspices of
this lodge, that the collection of discourses which I mea*
tioned above was published; and there is no fault found
with brother Robinet, nor brother Condorcet."