The name Kadosch here mentioned is a Hebrew word signifying "holy" or
"consecrated," which in the Cabala is found in conjunction with the
Tetragrammaton.[386] The degree is said to have developed from that of
Grand Elect,[387] one of the three "degrees of vengeance" celebrating
with sanguinary realism the avenging of the murder of Hiram. But in its
final form of Knight Kadosch--later to become the thirtieth degree of
the "Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite"--the Hiramic legend was changed
into the history of the Templars with Jacques du Molay as the
victim.[388] So the reprobation of attack on authority personified by
the master-builder becomes approbation of attack on authority in the
person of the King of France.

The introduction of the upper degrees with their political and, later
on, anti-Christian tendencies thus marked a complete departure from the
fundamental principle of Freemasonry that "nothing concerning the
religion or government shall ever be spoken of in the lodge." For this
reason they have been assailed not only by anti-masonic writers but by
Freemasons themselves.[389] To represent Barruel and Robison as the
enemies of Freemasonry is therefore absolutely false; neither of these
men denounced Craft Masonry as practised in England, but only the
superstructure erected on the Continent. Barruel indeed incurs the
reproaches of Mounier for his championship of English Freemasons:

He vaunts their respect for religious opinion and for authority. When he
speaks of Freemasons in general they are impious, rebellious successors
of the Templars and Albigenses, but _all those of England are innocent_.
More than this, all the Entered Apprentices, Fellow Crafts, and Master
Masons in all parts of the world are innocent; there are only guilty
ones in the higher degrees, which are not essential to the institution
and are sought by a small number of people.[390]

In this opinion of Barruel's a great number of Masonic writers
concur--Clavel, Ragon, Rebold, Thory, Findel, and others too numerous to
mention; all indicate Craft Masonry as the only true kind and the upper
degrees as constituting a danger to the Order. Rebold, who gives a list
of these writers, quotes a masonic publication, authorized by the Grand
Orient and the Supreme Council of France, in which it is said that "from
all these rites there result the most foolish conceptions, ... the most
absurd legends, ... the most extravagant systems, the most immoral
pri