But surely their external signs and tokens were every thing that is shocking to decency and civil order. It is uncommon presumption for the learned of the eighteenth century to pretend to know more about them than their contemporaries, the philosophers, the lawgivers of antiquity. These give no such account of them. I would desire any person who admires the ingenious dissertations of Dr. Warburton to read a dull German book, called Caracteristik der Mysterien der Altern, published at Frankfort in 1787. The author contents himself with a patient collection of every scrap of every ancient author who has said any thing about them. If the reader can see anything in them but the most absurd and immoral polytheism and fable, he must take words in a sense that is useless in reading any other piece of ancient composition. I have a notion that the Dionysiacs of Iona had some scientific secrets, viz. all the knowledge of practical mechanics which was employed by their architects and engineers, and that they were really a Masonic Fraternity. But, like the Illuminati, they tagged to the secrets of Masonry the secret of drunkenness and debauchery; they had their Sister Lodges, and at last became rebels, subverters of the states where they were protected, till aiming at the dominion of all Ionia, they were attacked by the neighbouring states and dispersed. They were Illuminators too, and wanted to introduce the worship of Bacchus over the whole country, as appears in the account of them given by Strabo. Perhaps the Pythagoreans had also some scientific secrets; but they too were Illuminators, and thought it their duty to overset the State, and were themselves overset.
Nothing is so dangerous as a mystic Association. The object remaining a secret in the hands of the managers, the rest simply put a ring in their