all deadly enemies to the gospel, atheists, men of profligate principles and profligate lives. This design he pursued with unabated zeal fifty years; and was seconded by his associates with an ardor and industry scarcely inferior to his own. In consequence of their united labors, and of the labors of others, from time to time combined with them, they ultimately spread the design throughout a great part of Europe; and embarked in it individuals, at little distances, over almost the whole of that continent. Their adherents inserted themselves into every place, office, and employment, in which their agency might become efficacious, and which furnished an opportunity of spreading their corruptions. They were found in every literary institution, from the abecedarian school to the academy of sciences; and in every civil office, from that of the bailiff to that of the monarch. They swarmed in the palace; they haunted the church. Wherever mischief could be done, they were found; and wherever they were found, mischief was extensively done. Of books they controlled the publication, the sale, and the character. An immense number they formed; an immense number they forged; prefixed to them the names of reputable writers, and sent them into the world, to be sold for a song; and when that could not be done, to be given away. Within a period shorter than could have been imagined, they possessed themselves, to a great extent, of a control, nearly absolute, of the literary, religious, and political state of Europe.

"With these advantages in their hands, it will easily be believed, that they left no instrument unemployed, and no measure untried, to accomplish their own malignant purposes. With a diligence, courage, constancy,

activity, and perseverance, which might rival the efforts of demons themselves, they penetrated into every corner of human society. Scarcely, a man, woman, or child was left unassailed, wherever there was a single hope that the attack might be successful. Books were written and published, in innumerable multitudes, in which infidelity was brought down to the level of peasants, and even of children, and poured with immense assiduity into the cottage and the school. Others, of a superior kind, crept into the shop and the farm-house; and others, of a still higher class, found their way to the drawing-room, the university, and the palace. The business of all men who were of any importance, and the education of the children of all such men, were, as far as possible, engrossed, or at least influenced, by these banditti of the moral world; and the hearts of those who had no importance but in their numbers and physical strength. A sensual, profligate nobility, and princes, if possible, still more sensual and profligate, easily yielded themselves and their children into the hands of these minions of corruption. Too ignorant, too enervated, or too indolent, to understand, or even to inquire that they might understand, the tendency of all these efforts, they marched quietly on to the gulf of ruin, which was already open to receive. them. With these was combined a priesthood, which, in all its dignified ranks, was still more putrid; and which eagerly yielded up the surplice and the lawn, the desk and the altar, to destroy that Bible which they had vowed to defend as well as to preach, and to renew the crucifixion of that Redeemer whom they had sworn to worship. By these agents, and these efforts, the plague was spread with rapidity, and to an

extent which astonished heaven and earth; and life went out, not in solitary cases, but by a universal extinction.

"While these measures were thus going on, with a success scarcely interrupted, Dr. Adam Weishaupt, professor of the canon law in the university of Ingoldstadt, a city of Bavaria, a man of no contemptible talents, but of immense turpitude, and a Jesuit, established the society of Illuminees. Into this establishment he brought all the systematized iniquity of his brotherhood distinguished beyond every other class of men for cunning, mischief, an absolute destitution of conscience, an absolute disregard of all the interests of man, and a torpid insensibility to moral obligation. No fraternity, for so long a time, or to so great an extent, united within its pale such a mass of talents, or employed in its service such a succession of vigorous efforts. The serpentine system of this order Weishaupt perfectly understood. The great design of the Jesuits had always been to engross the power and influence of Europe, and to regulate all its important affairs. The system of measures which they had adopted for this end, was superior to every preceding scheme of human policy. To this design Weishaupt, who was more absolutely an atheist than Voltaire, and as cordially wished for the ruin of Christianity, superadded a general intention of destroying the moral character of man. The system of policy adopted by the Jesuits. was, therefore, exactly fitted to his purpose; for the design, with this superaddition, was exactly the same.

“With these advantageous preparations, he boldly undertook this work of destruction, and laid the axe at the root of all moral principle, and the sense of all

moral obligation, by establishing a few fundamental doctrines, which were amply sufficient for this purpose. These were, that God is nothing; that government is a curse, and authority a usurpation; that civil society is the only apostasy of man; that the possession of property is robbery; that chastity and natural affection are mere prejudices; and that adultery, assassination, poisoning, and other crimes of a similar nature, are lawful, and even virtuous. Under these circumstances were founded the societies of Illuminism. They spread, of course, with a rapidity which nothing but fact could have induced any sober mind to believe. Before the year 1786, they were established in great numbers throughout Germany, in Sweden, Russia, Poland, Austria, Holland, France, Switzerland, Italy, England, Scotland, and even in America. In all these was taught the grand and sweeping principle of corruption, that the end sanctions the means a principle which, if every where adopted, would overturn the universe.

"The design of the founder and his coadjutors was nothing less than to engross the empire of the world, and to place mankind beneath the feet of himself and his successors.

"Voltaire died in the year following the establishment of Illuminism. His disciples, with one heart and one voice, united in its interests, and, finding a more absolute system of corruption than themselves had been able to form, entered eagerly into all its plans and purposes. Thenceforward, therefore, all the legions of infidelity are to be considered as embarked in a single bottom; and as cruising together against order, peace, and virtue, on a voyage of rapine and blood.

"The French revolution burst upon mankind at this moment. Here was opened an ample field for the labors of these abandoned men in the work of pollution and death. There is no small reason to believe, that every individual Illuminee, and almost, if not quite, every infidel, on the continent of Europe, lent his labors when he could—and his wishes when he could not for the advancement of the sins and the miseries which attended this unexampled corruption. Had not God taken the wise in their own craftiness, and caused the wicked to fall into the pit which they digged, and into the snares which their hands had set, it is impossible to conjecture the extent to which they would have carried their devastation of human happiness. But, like the profligate rulers of Israel, those who succeeded regularly destroyed their predecessors.

"Between ninety and one hundred of those who were leaders in this mighty work of destruction, fell by the hand of violence. Enemies to all men, they were, of course, enemies to each other. Butchers of the human race, they soon whetted the knife for each other's throats; and the tremendous Being who rules the universe, whose existence they had denied in a solemn act of legislation, whose perfections they had made the butt of public scorn and private insult, whose Son they had crucified afresh, and whose word they had burnt by the hands of the common hangman, swept them all, by the hand of violence, into an untimely grave. The tale made every ear which heard it tingle, and every heart chill with horror. It was, in the language of Ossian, "the song of death." It was like the reign of the plague in a populous city. Knell tolled upon knell; hearse followed hearse; and coffin