participate in the perfecting of all sciences, it positively excepts in the lodges two of the most beautiful, politics and theology, because these two sciences divide men and nations which Masonry constantly tends to unite." But on a further page of the same manual from which this quotation is taken we find it stated that Masonry is simply "the political application of Christianity." Indeed, during the last fifty years the Grand Orient has thrown off the mask and openly declared itself to be political in its aims. In October 1887 the Venerable Bro∴ Blanc said in a discourse which was printed for the lodges:
You recognise with me, my brothers, the necessity for Freemasonry to become a vast and powerful political and social society having a decisive influence on the resolutions of the Republican government.<sup></sup>
And in 1890 the Freemason Fernand Maurice declared "that nothing should happen in France without the hidden action of Freemasonry," and "if the Masons choose to organize, in ten years' time no one in France will be able to move outside us (personne ne bougera plus en France en dehors de nous)."
This is the despotic power which the Grand Orient has established in opposition to both Church and Government.
Moreover, Grand Orient masonry is not only political but subversive in its political aims. Instead of the peaceful trilogy of British masonry, "Brotherly love, relief, and truth," it has throughout adhered to the formula which originated in the Masonic lodges of France and became the war-cry of the Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." "It is the law of equality," says Ragon, "that has always endeared Masonry to the French," and "as long as equality really exists only in the lodges,