Note 41 — THE WAR OF ANTICHRIST WITH THE CHURCH AND CHRISTIAN CIVILIZATION.

[9] It is commonly believed that the encyclopædists and philosophers were the only men who overturned by their writings altar and throne at the time of the Revolution. But, apart from the facts that these writers were to a man Freemasons, and the most daring and plotting of Freemasons, we have abundant authority to prove that other Freemasons were everywhere even more practically engaged in the same work. Louis Blanc, who will be accepted as an authority on this point thus writes:—“It is of consequence to introduce the reader into the mine which at that time was being dug beneath thrones and altars by revolutionists, very much more profound and active than the encyclopædists: an association composed of men of all countries, of all religions, of all ranks, bound together by symbolic bonds, engaged under an inviolable oath to preserve the secret of their interior existence. They were forced to undergo terrific proofs while occupying themselves with fantastic ceremonies, but otherwise practised beneficence and looked upon themselves as equals though divided in three classes, apprentices, companions, and masters. Freemasonry consists in that. Now, on the eve of the French Revolution, Freemasonry was found to have received an immense development. Spread throughout the entire of Europe, it seconded the meditative genius of Germany, agitated France silently, and presented everywhere the image of a society founded on principles contrary to those of civil society.” Monsignor Segur writes on this—“See to what a point the reign of Jesus Christ was menaced at the hour the Revolution broke out. It was not France alone that it agitated, but the entire of Europe. What do I say? The world was in the power of Masonry. All the lodges of the world came in 1781 to Wilhelmsbad by delegates from Europe, Asia, Africa, and America; from the most distant coasts discovered by navigators, they came, zealous apostles of Masonry.... They all returned penetrated with the Illuminism of Weishaupt, that is Atheism, and animated with the poison of incredulity with which the orators of the Convent had inspired them. Europe and the Masonic world were then in arms against Catholicity. Therefore, when the signal was given, the shock was terrible, terrible especially in France, in Italy, in Spain, in the Catholic nations which they wished to separate from the Pope and cast into schism, until the time came when they could completely de-Christianize them. This accounts well for the captivities of Pius VI. and Pius VII. The Cardinals were dispersed, the Bishops torn from their Sees, the pastors separated from their flocks, the religious orders destroyed, the goods of the Church confiscated, the churches overturned, the convents turned into barracks, the sacred vessels stolen and melted down by sacrilegious avidity, the bells turned into money and cannons, scaffolds erected everywhere, and victims in thousands, in hecatombs, especially from amongst the clergy; in one word, all the horrors summed up in the ‘Revolution,’ and the end, which was the great unerring power of all its actions, namely, to see Christ cast down from His altars to make way for the goddess called Reason.”