having any connection with them, than the faithful account here given. I hope that there are few, very few of our countrymen, and none whom we call friend, who can think that an Order which held such doctrines, and which practised such things, can be any thing else than a ruinous Association, a gang of profligates. All their professions of the love of mankind are vain; their Illumination must be a bewildering blaze, and totally ineffectual for its purpose, for it has had no such influence on the leaders of the band; yet it seems quite adequate to the effects it has produced; for such are the characters of those who forget God.
If we in the next place attend to their mode of education, and examine it by those rules of common sense that we apply in other cases of conduct, we shall find it equally unpromising. The system of Illuminatism is one of the explanations of Free Masonry; and it has gained many partisans. These explanations rest their credit and their preference on their own merits. There is something in themselves, or in one of them as distinguished from another, which procures it the preference for its own sake. Therefore, to give this Order any dependence on Free Masonry is to degrade the Order. To introduce a Masonic Ritual into a manly institution, is to degrade it to a frivolous amusement for great children. Men really exerting themselves to reform the world, and qualified for the task, must have been disgusted with such occupations. They betray a frivolous conception of the task in which they are really engaged. To imagine that men engaged in the struggle and rivalship of life, under the influence of selfish, or mean, or impetuous passions, are to be wheedled into candid sentiments, or a generous conduct, as a froward child may sometimes be made gentle and tractable by a rattle or humming-top,