Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

886 WSISRAUf t AID
It is difficult to conceive that men can be so abandoned
to all sense of virtue and of piety—learned men, cunning
men, observing men, be so absolutely blind, and stupid,
and ignorant, as to seek the subversion of every city, and
town, and form of government, and semblance of religions
worship. But the proof is indisputable.
I charge not Free Masonry with this guilt; nor yet is her
character quite untarnished in the work. She was their
willing and faithful servant (B. p. 156.), u Let the laughers
laugh, the scoflere scoff; still the day will come when
princes and nations shall disappear from the face of the earth,
and when each man shall recognise no other law than his
reason. This shall be the grand work of secret societies."
(B. p< 111.) Again, speaking of the means by which to
gam his wicked ends, the chief, Weishaupt, says: " these
means are the secret schools of philosophy. These schools
have been in all ages the archives of nature and of the
rights of man. These schools, shall one day retrieve the
fall of human nature, and princes and nations shall disappear
from the face of the earth, and that without any violence.
Human nature shall form one great family, and the
earth shall become the habitation of the man of reason."
* The inferior lodges of Free Masonry are the most convenient
cloaks for our grand object," &c And not a
cloak merely. Weishaupt understands how to moralise
upon the meanest implements of handicraft, equal to the
fabled Solomon himseK Hear him. (B. p. 125.) " J%e
rough stems of Masonry* represents man in the primitive
state,Jroog-e, but free: the stone split, or broken, is the
state tf fallen nature, of mankind in a state of civil society,
no kmger united in one family, but divided according
to their states, governments, or religions. The polished
stone represents mankind reinstated in its primitive dignity
and independence"
Hear him address one of his polished stones, (those who
had ascended to the top degrees of Qluminism.) (B. p. 156.)
" All we have done for you hitherto, was only to prepare