But his taste, though coarse, accorded with what Weishaupt considered as a ruling propensity, by which he had the best chance of securing the fidelity of his subjects.—Craving desires, beyond the bonds of our means, were the natural consequences of indulgence; and since the purity of Christian morality stood in his way, his first care was to clear the road by rooting it out altogether—What can follow but general dissoluteness of manners?
Nothing can more distinctly prove the crooked politics of the Reformers than this. It may be considered as the main-spring of their whole machine. Their pupils were to be led by means of their sensual appetites, and the aim of their conductors was not to inform them, but merely to lead them; not to reform, but to rule the world.—They would reign, though in hell, rather than serve in heaven.—Dr. Bahrdt was a true Apostle of Illuminatism; and though his torch was made of the grossest materials, and "served only to discover sights of woe," the horrid glare darted into every corner, rousing hundreds of filthy vermin, and directing their flight to the rotten carrion where they could best deposit their poison and their eggs; in the breasts, to wit, of the sensual and profligate, there to fester and burst forth in a new and filthy progeny; and it is astonishing what numbers were thus roused into action. The scheme of Reading Societies had taken prodigiously, and became a very profitable part of the literary trade of Germany. The booksellers and writers soon perceived its importance, and acted in concert.
I might fill a volume with extracts from the criticisms which were published on the Religion Edict so often mentioned already. The Leipzig catalogue for one year contained 173. Although it concerned the Prussian States alone, these appeared in every corner of Germany; nay, also in Holland, in Flanders, in Hungary, in Switzerland, in Courland, and in Livonia. This shows it to have been the operation of an Associated Band, as was intimated to the King, with so much petulance by Mirabeau.