he found among his papers a collection of Masonic writings, containing the rituals, catechisms, and symbols of every kind, belonging to a long train of degrees of Free Masonry, together with many discourses delivered in different Lodges, and minutes of their proceedings. The perusal filled him with astonishment and anxiety. For he found that doctrines were taught, and maxims of conduct were inculcated, which were subversive of religion and of all good order in the state; and which not only countenanced disloyalty and sedition, but even invited to it. He thought them so dangerous to the state, that he sent an account of them to she Archbishop of Paris long before the Revolution, and always hoped that that Reverend Prelate would represent the matter to his Majesty's Ministers, and that they would put an end to the meetings of this dangerous Society, or would at least restrain them from such excesses. But he was disappointed, and therefore thought it his duty to lay them before the public1.
Mr. Lefranc says expressly, that this shocking perversion of Free Masonry to seditious purposes was, in a great measure, but a late thing, and was chiefly brought about by the agents of the Grand Master, the Duke of Orleans. He was, however, of opinion that the whole Masonic Fraternity was hostile to Christianity and to good morals, and that it was the contrivance of the great schismatic Faustus Socinus, who being terrified by the fate of Servetus, at Geneva, fell on this method of promulgating his doctrines among the great in secret. This opinion is but ill supported, and is incompatible with many circumstances in Free Masonry—But it is out of our way at present. Mr. Lefranc then takes particular notice of the many degrees of Chivalry cultivated in the Lodges, and shows how, by artful changes in the successive explanations of the same symbols, the doctrines of Christianity, and of all revealed religion, are completely exploded, and the Philosophe Inconnu becomes at last a professed Atheist.—He then takes notice of the political doctrines which are in like manner gradually unfolded, by which "patriotism and loyalty to the prince are declared to be narrow principles, inconsistent with universal