playing at chapel."

Why in the face of all this should any British Masons take up the
cudgels for the Illuminati and vilify Robison and Barruel for exposing
them? The American Mackey, as a consistent Freemason, shows scant
sympathy for this traitor in the masonic camp. "Weishaupt," he writes,
"was a radical in politics and an infidel in religion, and he organized
this association, not more for the purpose of aggrandizing himself, than
of overturning Christianity and the institutions of society." And in a
footnote he adds that Robison's _Proofs of a Conspiracy_ "contain a very
excellent exposition of the nature of this pseudo-masonic
institution."[530]

The truth is that Weishaupt was one of the greatest enemies of British
Freemasonry who ever lived, and genuine Freemasons will do themselves no
good by defending him or his abominable system.

Let us now see how far, apart from their role in Masonry, the Illuminati
can be regarded as noble idealists striving for the welfare of the human
race.

Idealism of the Illuminati

The line of defence adopted by the apologists of the Illuminati is
always to quote the admirable principles professed by the Order, the
"beautiful ideas" that run through their writings, and to show what
excellent people were to be found amongst them.

Of course on their face value the Illuminati appear wholly admirable, of
course there is nothing easier than to find innumerable passages in
their writings breathing a spirit of the loftiest aspiration, and of
course many excellent men figured amongst the patrons of the Order. All
this is the mere stock-in-trade of the secret society leader as of the
fraudulent company promoter, to whom the first essentials are a glowing
prospectus and a long list of highly respectable patrons who know
nothing whatever about the inner workings of the concern. These methods,
pursued as early as the ninth century by Abdullah ibn Maymun, enter
largely into the policy of Frederick the Great, Voltaire, and his
"brothers" in philosophy--or in Freemasonry.

The resemblances between Weishaupt's correspondence and that of Voltaire
and of Frederick the Great are certainly very striking. All at moments
profess respect for Christianity whilst working to destroy it. Thus just
as Voltaire in one letter to d'Alembert expresses his horror at the
publication of an anti-Christian pamphlet, _Le Testament de Jean
Meslier,[531]_ and in another urges him to have it circulated in