CHAP. X.

The Germanic Union-Its principal Actors, and the Conquests it prepared for the Illuminees.

AFTER having defcribed fo many plots, unmasked fo much artifice, and difclofed fuch various means of delufion and feduction, all issuing from the dens of impiety, why am I forbidden to lay down my pen, and, abandoning thefe dark haunts of vice, to affume the pleafing tafk of defcribing the habits of the virtuous man, or of a nation happy, and enjoying the fweets of peace beneath the shadow of its laws, and that under a beloved monarch, revered ftill more as the father than as the fovereign of his peaceful empire? Alas! the fight of fuch a nation has vanished from the face of the earth; thrones totter and disappear; ftates weep over the ruins of their religion and of their laws, or are yet painfully ftruggling with the devouring monster. Danger ftalks on every spot; and if happier days are mentioned, it can only ftimulate us to denounce the too long concealed caufes of our misfortunes, in hopes of feeing once again those nearly-forgotten days return. Though the mind revolts

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revolts at the idea, yet for the public good we will pursue that tribe of Weishaupt; and, fo far from giving repofe to our thoughts, we fhall be once more hurried into new plots and machinations invented by the most profound adepts of Illuminism, and horridly famous in Germany under the name of the German Union. To understand perfectly the object of this Union, the hiftorian must revert to confpiracies anterior to thofe of Weishaupt.

manic

We have often seen Voltaire boafting of the The Ger progrefs that Infidelity was making in the north of Union; the German Empire. This progrefs was not its origin. folely to be attributed to his labours, nor had he the leaft fufpicion of the many co-operators that were feconding his views.

In the very heart of Proteftantifm and of its fchools, a Confpiracy had been formed against the Proteftant and every branch of revealed religion, inveterate in its means and agents as that formed by Holbach's club. The Parifian Sophifters openly attacked Jefus Chrift and all Chriftianity. The clubs, or rather fchools, of the North of Germany, under pretence of purifying the Proteftant Religion, and of reftoring it to the principles of true Chriftianity, ftripped it of all the mysteries of the Gofpel, reduced it to that fpecies of Deifm which they decorate with the name of Natural Religion, and thus hoped to lead their adepts to a negation of all Religion. These new VOL. IV. lawgivers

X

lawgivers did not abfolutely profcribe revelation; but revelation was to be fubjected to the judgment of their reason.

The Antichriftian Confpiracy had originated in France with thofe men who ftyled themselves Philofophers, and who profeffed to be strangers to all theological erudition. In Germany it took rife in the heart of the Univerfities, and among their Doctors of Divinity. In France the Sophifters confpiring against all Religion cried up the toleration of the Proteftants, in hopes of destroying the Catholic faith; in Germany the Protestant Doctors abufed that toleration in order to fubftitute Philofophifm to the tenets of their church.

The first of thefe German Doctors who, under the mafk of Theological difquifitions, engaged in Semler. this Antichriftian Confpiracy, was SEMLER, profeffor of Divinity in the University of Halle, in Upper Saxony. The only use he appears to have made of his knowledge would lead us to fuppofe that he imbibed his principles from Bayle, rather than from the true fources of Theology. Like Bayle, we may obferve him here and there fcattering a few useful truths, but equally inclining toward paradox and fcepticifm. Rapid as Voltaire, but deftitute of his elegance, he can only be compared to that Antichriftian Chief for the multitude of contradictions into which he stumbles

at

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at every step. "It is not uncommon to fee him begin a sentence with an opinion that he contradicts

before be concludes it. His predominant fyftem, "and the only one that can be gathered from his "numerous reveries, is, that the symbols of "Christianity and of all other Sects are objects of "no confequence; that the Christian Religion con"tains but few truths of any importance; and that "every person may felect these truths and decide "upon them as he pleafes. His fcepticism has "never permitted him to fix upon any religious

opinion for himself, unless it be when he clearly "profeffes, that Proteftantifm is not founded on "better grounds than any of the other Sects; "that it ftill ftands in need of a very great reform ; " and that this reform fhould be effected by his "Brethren the Doctors of the Universities *."

This new reformer began to propagate his doc trines as early as the year 1754, and continued to circulate them, in German and in Latin, in a thoufand different shapes. At one time in an Historical and Critical Collection; at another, in Free Difquifitions on the Canons or Ecclefiaftical Laws; then in an Inftitution of the Chriftian Doctrine; and, above all, in an Effay on the Art and School of a Free Theology. Soon after a new Doctor appears, attempting to

*See News of a Secret Coalition against Religion and Monarchy. The Appendix, No. 9.

Teller.

Damm

and

Bahrdt.

Loffler.

make this defired reform, or to fupprefs the remaining myfteries that Luther and Calvin had not thought proper to reject. This was WILLIAM ABRAHAM TELLER, at first Profeffor at Helmftadt in the Dutchy of Brunfwick, afterwards Chief of the Confiftory and Provoft of a Church at Berlin. He made his firft effay for destroying the myfteries by publishing a Catechism, in which, fcoffing at the divinity of Chrift, he reduces his religion to Socinianifm. Soon after this, his pretended Dictionary of the Bible was to teach the Germans" methods to be followed in explaining "the Scriptures; by which they were to fee no "other doctrine in the whole of Chriftianity than

true Naturalism, under the cloak and symbols of "Judaifm."

About the fame time appeared two other Proteftant Doctors, who carried their new-fangled Theology ftill nearer to the state of a degraded and Antichriftian Philofophifm. These were the Doctors DAMM and BAHRDT; the former the Rector of a College at Berlin, the latter a Doctor of Divinity at Halle, but a man of fuch infamous morals, that even Philo-Knigge was afhamed to fee his name among Weishaupt's elect, and did not even dare to pronounce it †. fuperintendant of the Church of Gotha, ran the

LOFFLER, the

Ibid. Appendix, No. 10. † Endliche erklarung, P. 132.

fame