Sources of Inspiration
In his book ‘Sociétés secrètes et société’ (Secret Societies and Society) (published in 1874-76), Fr. N. Deschamps specified four sources of inspiration for Freemasonry:
Gnosis,[1] Manichaeism, Albigensinism and the Knights Templar, these are the sources of Freemasonry. Before showing how Freemasons of the 16th century arose from the remnants of the Templars, we are going to identify the similarities that modern Freemasonic doctrines have with all these heresies, (N. Deschamps Sociétés secrètes et société (Secret Societies and Society), v.1, p. 283)
Just as the Manicheans were only continuing from the Gnostics, these too were the descendants of the first sectarians against whom the Apostles and especially St Peter had reacted so vigorously. ‘The mystery of iniquity’, as St Paul described it (2. Thess. 2, 7), had begun to develop from the birth of the Church: From that time, Satan had conceived and given the world the anti-Christian and anti-social doctrine, of which the Gnostics and the Manicheans were to be the first apostles, and which later would be adopted by the Paulicians[3], Albigensians[4] and the Knights Templar, and would finally be passed on to the Masonic sects, to become perhaps the great heresy of the last times and figure in the supreme battles of the City of the World against the City of God [5] Indeed, the Masonic, Manichean and gnostic sects, in spite of their number and obvious variety, basically profess the same principles and pursue the same end; and when, in the last times, the universe is seduced and governed by Masonic societies, or those to which they give rise, one will witness the sad spectacle of the great apostasy predicted by Saint Paul (2 Thess.2. 3). It will be the consummation of the “mystery of iniquity” of which the apostles indicated the beginning.
Appearance of the Masonic Organization
All historians agree in recognizing that Freemasonry, as presently organized, appeared at London on June 24th, 1717 (the feast of St John), when the Grand Lodge of London was created mainly on the initiative of Jean Théophile Désaguliers[6] and James Anderson[7], both Protestant ministers and Rosicrucians. What exactly came to pass in 1717? Here the historians no longer agree. Some consider that there was a fusion of two pre-existing bodies: the former corporation of stonemasons and the occultist society of Rosicrucians, a fusion described thus by Rabbi Toaff:
There is within Freemasonry a philosophic and religious secret doctrine introduced by Rose-Croix Gnostics during their fusion with the Freemasons in 1717. This secret doctrine, or gnosis, is the exclusive privilege of the higher degrees of Freemasonry.[8]
This would explain the presence within Freemasonry of two currents of inspiration. The Freemason Marius Lepage, remarks that French Masonry quite specifically unites within it two different traditional currents: the operative stemming from the former stonemasons and the speculative brought about by Hermeticists and philosophers.[9]
Abbé Barbier’s Historical Explanation
In his book Les infiltrations maçonnique dans l’Église (Masonic infiltration in the Church), Abbé Emmanuel Barbier presents the same thesis but in more detail:
Freemasonry was nothing other than gnostic in origin. It would arise from the alliance of representatives of gnostic societies with the lodges of stonemasons who built our Catholic buildings of the 13th to the 17th century. Here is our historical explanation of this thesis.[10]
The explanation begins with a statement on the English corporation of stonemasons which in the 14th century took the name ‘Brotherhood of free masons’ which lost its importance in the 17th century and which, to survive, accepted non-masons as members, from whence its new name of the ‘Brotherhood of Free and Accepted Masons’ derives. The historical explanation given by Abbé Barbier continues:
At this time there was an alchemist society called “Rosicrucian,” heirs to the order of the Knights Templar and who preserved a primitive Gnosticism. (…)
The name of Rosicrucians came from the emblem adopted by the society: a rose on a cross, symbolizing, philosophically, the union of science and faith, and gnosticallly, salvation, not by faith, but through science.
The members of this society dedicated themselves to alchemy and to propagation of gnosis. At first few, their number had increased successively, to such a point that at the beginning of the 18th century, they were highly esteemed, in England especially, where they enjoyed a most considerable influence.[11]
On, June 24th, 1717, the Rosicrucians, Jean-Théophile Desaguliers, a naturalist, and James Anderson, a Protestant minister, ‘attended’, says the letter of convocation, ‘brothers George Payne, King, Calvert, Luniden, Elliot, and many others’, convened, in the Apple Tree Inn, located in Charles Street, near Covent-Garden Market, in London, all members of the only four Masonic lodges in London at this time.
This meeting had the aim of bringing about the union of the ‘Brotherhood of the Free and Accepted Masons’ with the ‘Alchemical Rosicrucian Society’ thus allowing the Rosicrucians to conceal their alchemist research and their gnostic ideas under the cloak of respectability afforded by the Brotherhood, while gaining for the Free and Accepted Masons the advantages that only the rich and influential followers of the Rosicrucians could bring them.
The assembly unanimously accepted this union and Freemasonry arose from this agreement. The ‘Alchemical Rosicrucian Society, and the ‘Brotherhood of Free and Accepted Masons’ disappeared for ever and Freemasonry, the home of pure Gnosticism, arose to confront the Roman Church, seat of a false[12] and corrupt Gnosticism[13].
The grouping of these four lodges of London, assembled at the Apple Tree Inn, took the name of ‘Grand Lodge of England’. In 1723, Anderson drafted and had published the ‘Book of the Constitutions of Free and Accepted Masons’. This name was kept to avert the possibility of suspicion about the real purpose of nascent Freemasonry. But the secret purpose of the new society was always to resume the work of the former Gnostics and the Knights Templar, which was to replace the semitised, degenerate Christianity of the West28 with an esoteric gnostic Christianity, which its leaders had learnt about by studying the sacred books of the East, and by joining some secret societies from that area. The proposed aim was to spread liberalism throughout the universe.
It managed to prevent any suspicion that the new Freemasonry was anything other than the continuation of the Free and Accepted Masons, whose ceremonies and peculiarities had been derived from the Brotherhood of Stonemasons (...). The Rosicrucians, in founding Freemasonry, added alchemical and gnostic symbols to the Masonic and architectural ones.[14]
[The following sections, the ‘“Appearance” of the Rosicrucians’, ‘Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry before 1717’, and ‘The Socinian Connection’, enclosed in [ ] parenthesis have been added by the Editor of Apropos.]
“Appearance” of the Rosicrucians
The Rosicrucians or ‘alleged members of the occult-cabbalistic-theosophic “Rosicrucian Brotherhood”’, as Fr Herman Gruber S.J.[15] (The Catholic Encyclopaedia) describes them, were revealed in a work, The Fama or Fama Fraternitis Rosae Crucis published around 1614 and the Confessio or Confessio Faternitatis published circa 1615. These two works, The Fama and The Confessio are known as the Rosicrucian manifestos.
To these may be added a third document The Chemical Wedding of Christian Rosencreuz by Johann Valentin Andreae[16], grandson of ‘theLuther of Wurtemburg’, described as the theoretician of Rosicrucianism and said to be the author of all three works, although some dispute this. The British historian Frances Yates considers the underlying philosophy of these works to be related to that of the English cabalist and alchemist John Dee, and finds strains of Giordano Bruno also. Andreae was thought to have renounced Rosicrucianism later as a ludibrum or folly.
There is no doubt however that Rosicrucians were the main occult group to support Protestantism from its birth. It appears that even Luther may have been a Rosicrucian – his coat of arms constitutes a rose upon a cross. Cf. Epiphanius, Maçonnerieet sectes secrètes, p. 43-44 and Jean Lombard La Face cachée de l’histoire moderne (The Hidden side of Modern History) v.1, the chapter ‘Animated by the Rosicrucians, the Reformation divides Christendom’.
Rosicrucianism and Masonry Before 1717
The British historian, Frances Yates, admits that discussion of Rosicrucianism becomes bogged down in Masonic myth. She states initially that:
So far as my own researches have gone, I have found no evidence of a real secret society calling itself ‘Rosicrucian’ and really in existence as an organised group at the time the Rosicrucian manifestos were published.[17]
Fr Gruber, although sceptical about the Rosicrucian Brotherhood, admits, nevertheless, that, after 1750, occult Rosicrucianism was propagated by Freemasonry, where it led to extravagant manifestations, and Yates, in her work, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, is not quite so sure of Andreae’s renunciation which some historians are keen to accept. She writes:
Thus Andreae’s discussions of the R. C. Fraternity in terms of theatre may belong to a background which we are only dimly beginning to perceive (…) It is Andreae’s strong interest in drama which helps to explain the ludibrum (folly) of Christian Rosencreuz and his fraternity as, not a hoax but a dramatic presentation of a profoundly interesting and intellectual movement.[18]
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She also asks:
Is there also in the manifestos the idea of, or the blueprint for, an international secret society which had, and has, a real existence, namely Freemasonry?[19]
She cites the English essayist, Thomas de Quincy, who published the main results of research into Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry conducted by the German, J.G. Buhle in 1804. Yates tells us that, despite maintaining that there is no historical record in Germany of Rosicrucian colleges or lodges, de Quincy ‘is convinced, that when Rosicrucianism was transplanted to England, it became Freemasonry. He solemnly affirms his belief that “Freemasonry is neither more nor less than Rosicrucianism as modified by those who transplanted it to England”.’[20]
De Quincey believed that the person mainly responsible for this was Robert Fludd. There is certainly evidence of links between Rosicrucianism and Masonry in both Scotland and England prior to Freemasonry’s official appearance in 1717. Yates advises us that the earliest known record of speculative Masonry in an English Lodge was Elias Ashmole’s admission to a lodge in 1646. Ashmole, the alchemist, ‘had copied out in his own hand the Rosicrucian manifestoes adding to them a formal letter in his own hand admiring their aims and asking to be allowed to join them.’[21]
David Stevenson, in The Origins of Freemasonry – Scotland’s Century 1590-1710, demonstrates that Rosicrucianism was certainly known to leading Scottish Masons. Lord Balcarres, a collector of alchemist manuscripts, collected Rosicrucian works ‘including translations into Scots of the “Fama” and the “Confessio” in his own hand dated 1633.’[22] Balcarres’s son-in-law was Sir Robert Moray who had been initiated in the Lodge of Edinburgh in 1641 (where the laird John Boswell of Auchinlech had been initiated in 1600) and was patron of Thomas Vaughan, aka Eugenius Philalethes, who first published an English translation of the two Rosicrucian manifestoes in 1652.
Both Moray and Ashmole were members of the Royal Society founded in the reign of Charles II.
The Rosicrucian ferment had many contributors including Michael Maier (1566-1622), the physician to the Emperor Rudolph II[23] and to the Landgrave of Hesse, and Robert Fludd (1574-1637). These two, Maier and Fludd, are generally recognized as major proponents of Rosicrucianism contributing what Yates calls ‘whole libraries of weighty books’ on the subject. Johann Amos Komensky or Comenius, a member of the Hussite, Bohemian Brethren also features as one of the principals in the Rosicrucian movement.
Comenius, friend and lieutenant of Johann Valentin Andreae, developed a philosophy, his ‘pansophia’[24] , and is considered as one of the first exponents of the ideas which inspired UNESCO from its beginnings.[25] Comenius and John Drury, a Scotsman, were invited to England by Samuel Hartlib, says Yates, to propagate universal reformation, advancement of learning, and other utopist ideas’. There is no doubt that these ideas were Rosicrucian. Comenius himself ‘thought he had a mandate from parliament to build (Francis) Bacon’s New Atlantis[26] inEngland’[27].
It is also interesting to note that there is a reference to a Rosicrucian-Masonic link in a poem published in Edinburgh in 1638:
For we be brethren of the Rosie-Crosse; We have the Mason Word and second sight.[28]
Yates also indicates that the first reference to Accepted Masons was found associated with Rosicrucianism, as follows, in a Masonic pamphlet of 1676:
The Modern Green-ribbon’d Caball, together with the Ancient Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross; the HermetickAdepti and the company of Accepted Masons intend all to dine together on the 31 of November next.[29]
And Yates opines:
The English document of 1676 describes how the Green Ribboned Cabal dined with the Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross, the Hermetick Adepti, and the Accepted Masons, all having in common their “invisibility”. Perhaps this fragment represents earlier traditions of, so to speak, intercommunion between secret societies…[30]
There is therefore evidence to suggest some degree of intercourse between Rosicrucians and Masons before 1717. The Rosicrucians were widely known in the late 17th century as ‘the invisible’ and one might well conclude that the movement existed, under whatever guise, preceding its ‘outing’, mythical or otherwise, by Johann Andreae and his associates from 1603 onwards.
The Socinian Link
Henricus Neuhusius[31], 1618, maintained that the Rosicrucians wereSocinians[32]. Feller in his Dictionnaire Historique, as well as AbbéLefranc who was assassinated at Paris on the 12th September, 1792 claimed the same ofFreemasonry. [33] In his work, La voile levé pour les curieux or Histoire de la Franc-Maçonnerie depuis son origine jusqu’à nos jours , Abbé Lefranc states the following :
Vicenza was the cradle of the Masonry in 1546. It was among the society of atheists and deists assembled there (…) that the foundations of Masonry were laid. (…)
These decisions however were not known to the Republic of Venice which vigorously pursued the authors. (…) Bernardin Ochin, Loelius Socin, Péruta, Gentilis, Jacques Chiari, Francois Lenoir, Darius Socin, Alica, Abbé Leonard, dispersed where they could; and this dispersal was one of the reasons why their doctrine continued to spread in various places in Europe. Loelius Socin was to gain fame among the principal heretics who set Germany alight (…)
Loelius Socin – let us repeat it - left in Fauste Socin, his nephew, a skilful defender of his opinions; and it is to his talents, his science, his indefatigable activity and to the protection of the principles that he knew how to put in place, that Freemasonry owes its origin, its first establishments and the collection of principles which are the basis of its doctrine.[34]
Etienne Couvert claims in his work, La gnose contre la foi, that Adriano Lemmi, on his enthronement as Grand Master of the Grand Orient of Italy on 29th September 1893, hailed Fausto Sozini as the true father of Masonry. The Humanist writer, Marian Hillar, a student of Socianism, observes that:
The intellectual ferment Socinian ideas produced in Europe determined the future philosophical trends and led directly to the development of the Enlightenment. (…)
The precursor ideas of the Polish Brethren (The Socinians) on religious freedom were later expanded, perfected and popularized by John Locke (1632-1704) in England and Pierre Bayle (1647-1706) in France and Holland. (…)The ideas of John Locke were in turn transplanted directly to the American continent by James Madison and Thomas Jefferson who implemented them for the first time in American legislation[35]
They were the first to postulate the complete separation of Church and State an idea never before discussed in Christian societies. Their spirit of absolute religious freedom expressed in their practice and writings ‘determined, more or less immediately, all the subsequent revolutions in favour of religious liberty’.[36]
In his article, The Philosophical Legacy of the XVI and XVIIth century Socinians: their rationality, Hillar adds that the postulates of the Socinians, that placed morality at the centre of religion, while minimizing dogma, and which saw reason as the absolute hegemon, became adopted in the ideological programme of the Deists.
From the above one can clearly discern the Socinian influence in Freemasonry. [End of insert by Editor, Apropos]
A First Image of Freemasonry
The historical account by Abbé Barbier of the Rosicrucian influence in Freemasonry is in accord therefore with the explanations by such authors as Marius Lepage and Rabbi Toaff; historians would continue to discuss questionable areas in this history, for example, regarding the previous history of the society of Rosicrucians; but for the main part it corresponds well with what we know about Freemasonry.
The Freemasonry which appeared in 1717 seems therefore to have arisen from the infiltration of a corporate society (the free and accepted masons) by occult Rosicrucians (or ‘intercommunion’ as Yates describes it). And it occurred in 17th century England, a country won by the Reformation.
This has resulted in Freemasonry having:
- a double symbolism: one professional in appearance, the other occult
- a dual ideology: one visible: liberalism; the other secret: gnosis;
Notes Regarding the Liberal and Gnostic Characteristics Of Freemasonry
1. The liberal Protestant character. Freemasonry appeared in 1717 in England, at the very moment when Protestantism’s victory over Catholicism in this country appeared to be well established with the elimination of the Stuart dynasty, the seizure of power by the Hanoverian dynasty, and France’s recognition of this by the treaty of Utrecht of 1713.
It came into being mainly through three Protestants: Jean Théophile Désaguliers, James Anderson (already mentioned) and Ramsay (the first two being Rosicrucians).
Ramsay was a Scottish adventurer (1636-1743), born and brought up in a Protestant family; he lived for some years among the circle of acquaintances of Fénelon and Madam Guyon, the apostle of Quietism.
Ramsay played an important role in the introduction of Freemasonry to France. Its constitutions (Anderson’s Constitutions 1723) reflect liberal Protestant ideas—in particular: moralism without dogma, ‘this religion in which all men agree’. [37]
We know that the Freemason Albert Lantoine described the institution of masonry as ‘the opening of a Huguenot shop’[38] and that Monsignor Jouin[39], the expert on masonry wrote that ‘Freemasonry is a daughter of the Reformation’. [40]
This does not indicate that the majority of Protestants are favourable to Freemasonry. Some Protestant groups were founded to fight Freemasonry such as the National Christian Association in the USA in the 19th Century. (Cf. Claudio Jannet, La franc-maçonnerie au XIXeme siècle). [Several Protestant churches have also condemned Freemasonry –
2. Its occult or gnostic character. “Gnosis is the essence and marrow of Freemasonry,”[41] said the American Freemason Albert Pike[42]. But this doctrine remains secret while liberalism is openly proclaimed.
Because Freemasonry, due to its ideas and aims, conceals its Gnosticism under the camouflage of liberalism, one should avoid the error of only seeing the façade and forgetting what lies behind it.
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Freemasonry and the League of Nations Freemasonry and Europe
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“With Christianity under fire in all quarters today, and an anti-Christian, anti-life and anti-family political order rising from the ashes of old Christendom, it is hardly difficult to observe the final stages of the crucifixion of the Mystical Body of Christ being brought on through the aegis of secret societies condemned by pope after pope for nearly 300 years. M. de Lassus’s book tears the mask off of Freemasonry to reveal the ugly visage of militant Christophobia.”
...Michael J. Matt
Editor, The Remnant, USA
[1]I.e., The Christian gnosis of the first centuries.
[2]The meaning of ‘City’ is relatively clear here. In terms of Catholic social doctrine it often has the wider meaning of civilisation, society etc. Added by Editor, Apropos.
[3]A Manichean or quasi-Manichean sect. Among other things they rejected or minimised the sacraments, abhorred images and condemned invocation of the Saints and repudiated Church tradition. They also believed in two powers, one good, one evil dividing the universe between them, and they held the earth and all things sensible to have been created by the spirit of evil. C.f. The Catholic Dictionary. Footnote added by Editor, Apropos.
[4]The Albigensians were a sect of Manichean heretics of the 12th and 13th centuries who derived their name from the town of Albi in the Languedoc where a Council was held in 1176 to condemn their doctrines. The Albigensians taught that there are two opposing creative principles, one good, and the other evil: the invisible world proceeding from the former, the body and all material things the latter. They rejected the Old Testament and the ‘perfect’ among them were forbidden marriage. C.f. The Catholic Dictionary . Footnote added by Editor, Apropos.
[5]The main elements of this doctrine are:
[6]Jean Théophile Désaguliers (1683-1744), son of a Protestant minister from La Rochelle, was personal chaplain to the Prince of Wales, the future George II.
[7]A Scottish Presbyterian minister (1684-1744)
[8]Elie Benamozegh, Israel et l’humanité, note by the editors, Dr Modiano, President of the Representative Councils of Israelites in France, and Rabbi Toaff, which appeared in the re-edition of this work in 1961. Quoted by Léon de Poncins, Christianisme et franc-maçonnerie, p.157. Re gnosis, see p. 114 below.
[9]The journal, Le Symbolisme, No. 6 July, 1956. (Our emphasis).
[10]Abbé Barbier, op. cit. p.103
[11]The Mystic Tie, By Mackey –Le gnostiscisme et la franc-maconnerie, Published by Hans (Note by Abbé Barbier)
[12]Remember that Abbé Barbier is recounting here the historical account then current in Masonic milieu and that it is not his view that is expressed here.
[13]Note on the Rosicrucians ‘ The members of Rose-Croix practised alchemy, and their order was credibly the regular organization of the international and absolutely secret brotherhood of alchemists, who, throughout the Middle-Ages, and going back to antiquity were credibly the successors of the Gnostics of the first period of Christianity … Gnosticism was probably the manifestation of the secret doctrine of the Mysteries of Ancient Greece ‘ (L’Acacia, May edition, 1908) (Note by Abbé Barbier).
[14]Abbé Barbier, op. cit. p. 105-107. What is said about symbolism rings true today? It can be seen in the use Freemasonry makes of architectural symbols (the set square and compass, for example) and of gnostic symbols (for example, in the five-pointed luminous star with the letter G in the middle).This account of the previous history of Freemasonry recounted by Abbé Barbier is very similar to the account presented in an Italian Masonic document, La Massoneria, in 1945 which was reserved for Lodge officials and which was partially reproduced by Leon de Poncins in his book, Christianisme et Franc-maçonnerie. P. 161-162. (Found on p.125-126 in the English version, Freemasonry and the Vatican.
[15]Fr Gruber was to attempt a truce with Freemasonry in the 1920s – see Leon de Poncins’, Freemasonry and the Vatican. p. 7.
[16]‘A devout Lutheran pastor with Socialist interests’, Frances A Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Routledge, Keegan and Paul, 1972.
[17]p. 263.
[18]p. 184.
[19]p. 264.
[20]p. 265.
[21]p. 267.
[22]p. 101.
[23]During Rudolph’s reign, Prague ‘became a Mecca for those interested in esoteric and scientific studies. Hither came John Dee and Edward Kelly, Giordano Bruno and Johannes Kepler (…) Jews might pursue their cabalistic studies undisturbed (Rudolph’s favourite religious adviser was Pistorius, a Cabalist)’ Toleration was also afforded the Hussite Bohemian Church and to the Bohemian Brethren. Yates. p. 26
[24]Yates in The Rosicrucian Enlightenment states ‘We can now see Comenius and his pansophism as coming directly out of the Rosicrucian movement as now understood. p. 217
[25]See Chapter V, ‘Jan Amos Comenius’ in Maçonnerie et Sectes Secrètesby Epiphanius, Courrier de Rome, 1998.
[26] Francis Bacon’s New Atlantis is a classical utopia of that era. Yates advises us: ‘Though the name Rose Cross is nowhere mentioned by Bacon in the “New Atlantis”, it is abundantly clear that he knew the Rose Cross fiction and was adapting it to his own parable. New Atlantis was governed by R.C. Brothers, invisibly travelling as “merchants of light” in the outside world from their invisible college or centre, now called Saloman’s House, and following the rules of the R.C. Fraternity, to heal the sick free of charge, to wear no special dress. Moreover the “cherubim’s wings” seal the scroll from New Atlantis, as they seal the “Fama”. The island had something angelical about it, rather than magical, and its official wore a red cross in his turban. (…) The religion of “New Atlantis has much in common with the Rosicrucian manifestoes. (…) It is profoundly influenced by Hebraic-Christian mysticism, as in the Christian Cabala. The inhabitants of New Atlantis respect the Jews; they call their college after Solomon and seek God in nature.’Yates p. 166-168.
[27]Yates p. 228.
[28]Yates, The Rosicrucian Enlightenment, Routledge Classics 1972. p. 268.
[29] Ibid.
[30]p. 274
[31]In his work Pia et utillissima admonitio de Fratribus Rosae Crucis, Danzig 1618. Quoted by Frances Yates.
[32]In 1545 Lelio Sozini founded a secret society at Vicenza in the diocese of Venice. In 1546 he is alleged to have attended a secret society of reformers which, according to various authors, was attended by Blandrata, Alciatus, Gentilis, Lelio and Ochin among others. The object of the society was to promote Antitrinitarianism thus placing its advocates in the lineage of the Sabellians, Macedonians and Arians. Following its discovery by the Venetian authorities the parties fled where they could. Lelio travelled widely visiting Switzerland, France, England, the Netherlands, Prague, Vienna and Poland. He was a friend of the Reformers Calvin, Melancthon and Bullinger. He died in Zurich in 1562. Faustus Sozzini took on his uncle’s mantle and in 1579 arrived in Poland where he became acknowledged as the main theoretician of the Socinian movement. In 1598, due to the increasing antipathy of Catholics, he was almost killed and retreated from Cracow to Luslawice where he was given refuge by the Socinian, Abraham Blonski. Faustus Sozzini died in 1604. The Socinians were expelled from Poland in 1638 and dispersed throughout Europe where, according to The Catholic Encyclopedia, ‘many princes were said to favour them secretly.’ The surname Sozzini is spelled in different forms: Sozinni, Sozini, Socin, Socinus etc.
[33]Histoire de L’Église de l’abbé J. F. Darras, v.XXXIII.
[34]Histoire de l’Eglise by Abbe J.E. Darras Vol. XXXIII.
[35]http://www.socinian.org/socinian_refresher.html
[36]‘From the Polish Socinians to the American Constitution’. Published in A Journal from the Radical Reformation. A Testimony to Biblical Unitarianism, Vol. 4, No.3, pp. 22-57, 1994.
[37]Cf. Bernard Fay, La franc-maçonnerie et la révolution intellectuelle du XVIIIe siècle, (Freemasonry and the Intellectual Revolution of the XVIIIth Century), chap. IV, paragraph VIII).
[38]A Lantoine, La franc-maçonnerie chez elle, p.342. Quoted by J Marquez- Rivière, La trahison spirituelle de la franc-maçonnerie, p. 39
[39]Mgr. Jouin (1844-1932) was parish-priest of St Augustine’s in Paris from 1899 until his death; La Revue internationale des sociétés secrètes which he founded and edited appeared from 1912 to 1939 and was the best source of information on Freemasonry during that period.
[40]See Martin Short’s, ‘Inside the Brotherhood’ and John Lawrence’s Freemasonry- a religion? Editor, Apropos]
[41]Quoted by Abbé Barbier, op. cit. p.10.
[42]In Albert Pike, see below p. 116.