Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

354 WEISHAUPT'S VIEWS or
the end which they proposed, and from the importance of
that end. 1 It is by this scale that we must measure the
mad and wicked explanations of the Rosicrucians, the Exorcists,
and the Cabalists. These are rejected by all good
Masons, because incompatible with social happiness. Only
such systems as promote this, are retained. But, alas!
they are all sadly deficient, because they leave us under the
dominion of political and religious prejudices; and they
are as inefficient as the sleepy dose of an ordinary sermon.
" But I have contrived an explanation which has every
advantage ; is inviting to Christians of every communion,
gradually frees them from all religious prejudices, cultivates
the social virtues, and animates them by a great, a feasible,
and speedy prospect of universal happiness, in a state
of liberty and moral equality, freed from the obstacles
which subordination, rank, and riches, continually throw in
our way. My explanation is accurate and complete; my
means are effectual and irresistible. Our secret association
works in a way that nothing can withstand, and man shall
soon be free and happy"
I have been ready to indulge a hope, that some rational
account of the origin, history, and object of Free Masonry,
might be given; but, as much as Weishaupt's principles
are to be contemned, his penetration in the knowledge of
history, of human institutions, and of character, is such as
to command respect; and though coming in an age after
him, with some efforts to understand the subject, few will be
ready this day to take up his gauntlet. But let us hear no
more from those simple men who state matters of fact in
masonic history beyond the sixteenth century, beyond the
Christian era, beyond the flood.
Weis-haupt, i. e. wise-head, he was rightly named. Profound
in research, he declares, that " all the systems of Masonry
have sprung from the blue lodge of three degrees;"
i. e. the master's lodge. Whence that sprung he is ignorant,
and his ignorance frets him. He can trace it to the
lodge self-constituted in London, A. D. 1717, but no fur-