The Illuminati;

styled " Priests " and " Regents , or Princes ; " in the greater are comprehended those of " Magus " and " Eex . " Between these two classes were afterwards interwoven the three symbolic degrees of Masonry , with those of Scotch Novice and Scotch Knight . From the last class were chosen the " elect , " who were the supreme council , and the " Areopagites" The operations of the sectdepended in every degree

, , , on the tact of one single brother , designated the Brother Inquisitor , whose office was to make proselytes , and to prepare the minds of the newly initiated for the part they were intended to act . De Luchet ' s anger appears to have been excited by the protection given to Masonry under Frederick the Great , and the assumption by that monarch of supreme authority over the Orderby the institution

, of the thirty-third degree of the Ancient and Accepted Eite , the pattern on which was formed the supreme council of the Illuminati . M . De Luchet being a zealous son of holy church , of course classes the order of Freemasons with the heretical abominations of Luther , Calvin , and Protestantism generally ; such opinions of the Craft have been inculcated bv Jesuit malice upon the minds of the ignorant for ages past ,

and are still promulgated by the agents of that association . The marquis expresses his fears that the overthrow of all religion will speedily ensue unless the Masons , and the kindred Illuminati , be suppressed . In a short preface to his essay on the Illuminati , he says that in Germany and France much has been written against Prussia , and

that recently established kingdom had been criticized with extreme severity . ' ' All these works , " says he , " speak of the Illuminati , to which gloomy sect are to be attributed all the ills which have befallen the heritage of the immortal Frederick . He goes on . to notice the numerous sects , theological , philosophical , and political , which were every where in Europe rising at the period he wrote ; and says that England

itself is not free from some of the new dogmas . Au examination of the Masonic system leads him , by a somewhat singular train of ideas , to investigate that of the Illuminati ; and he is led to conclude that the council of this latter order was an instrument of deception , a laboratory of iniquity , where chains were forged for kings , and poison distilled for the corruption of humanity ; whose oaths realize the bloody fable of Atreus ; and whose tenets , if fulfilled , would cover the earth with a race of murderers . The author alludes to what he considers the

baneful tendency of the patronage shown by some of the contemporary sovereigns of Europe to these pseudo-philosophic , but really revolutionary societies , and warns the princes of the continent that the tendency of them is to destroy royalty , and to overturn the whole fabric of society . A quantity of verbiage follows of the most inflated descriptionin which we find such expressions as this— " Kings

them-, selves must lay the axe to the root of this empoisoned tree , whose roots are in hell , but whose lofty branches overshadow their thrones . ' We shall now proceed to examine what our author has to say in detail .