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nydus/Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of EuropePublic
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CHAP. II.

would have thought, that a professor at Ingolstadt was to become the teacher of the professors of Gottingen, and of the greatest men

Spartacus to Cato.

"Send me back my degree of Illuminatus Minor; it is the wonder of all men here (I may perhaps find time to give a translation of the discourse of reception, which contains all that can be said of this Association to the public); as also the two last sheets of my degree, which is in the keeping of Marius, and Celsus, under 100 locks, which contains my history of the lives of the Patriarchs." N. B. Nothing very particular has been discovered of these lives of the Patriarchs. He says, that there were above sixty sheets of it. To judge by the care taken of it, it must be a favourite work, very hazardous, and very catching.

In another letter to Cato, we have some hints of the higher degrees, and concerning a peculiar morality, and a popular religion, which the Order was one day to give the world. He says, "There must (a la Jesuite) not a single purpose ever come in sight that is ambiguous, and that may betray our aims against religion and the state. One must speak sometimes one way and sometimes another, but so as never to contradict ourselves, and so that, with respect to our true way of thinking, we may be impenetrable. When our strongest things chance to give offence, they must be explained as attempts to draw answers which discover to us the sentiments of the person we converse with." N. B. This did not always succeed with him.

Spartacus says, speaking of the priests degree, "One would almost imagine, that this degree, as I have managed it, is genuine Christianity, and that its end was to free the Jews from slavery. I say, that Free Masonry is concealed Christianity. My explanation

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