perfidy of the Illuminati with regard to the Freemasons is therefore apparent. Even Mounier, who set out to refute Barruel on the strength of the information supplied to him by the Illuminatus Bode, admits their duplicity in this respect.
Weishaupt [says Mounier] made the acquaintance of a Hanoverian, the Baron von Knigge, a famous intriguer, long practised in the charlatanism of lodges of Freemasons. On his advice new degrees were added to the old ones, and it was resolved to profit by Freemasonry whilst profoundly despising it. They decided that the degrees of Entered Apprentice, Fellow Craft, Master Mason, and Scotch Knight should be added to those of the Illuminati, and that they would boast of possessing exclusively the real secrets of the Freemasons and affirm that Illuminism was the real primitive Freemasonry.
"The papers of the Order seized in Bavaria and published," Mounier says again, show that "the Illuminati employed the forms of Freemasonry, but that they considered it in itself, apart from their own degrees, as a puerile absurdity and that they detested the Rose-Croix." Mounier, as a good disciple of Bode, takes much the same view and pities the naïveté of the Freemasons, who, "like so many children, spend a great part of the time in their lodges playing at chapel."
Why in the face of all this should