The reader may rest assured, that villany never slumbers; it watches incessantly the opportunity for the completion of its views. It will persuade the imbecile adept, that all his wants are to disappear on the establishment of the
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reign of Equality and Liberty; that he will be as free from wants as the savage; that Nature shall provide for them; and this heedless adept thirsts after such an Equality. If the adept ruffian be taught that the fruits belong to all, though the land to none, he will easily find means of obtaining his share.
But am I really thinking of reconciling the adepts with their plots? What is it to them whether you see any agreement between them or not? Villany, we all know, is replete with contradictions; but is it the less wicked on that account, or are its crimes less real? In vain would the reader object and say, What can these men want with their monstrous Equality, with their plots against our civil laws, our title to even the very name of property? Must we then, to please them, abandon our habitations; must we renounce all arts and sciences, and end with burning our cities, towns, and villages, to follow them in herds like the savage and Nomade clans?—Are half the inhabitants of the globe to be slaughtered, the better to scatter these roaming herds? What can be the object of those arts and sciences, and particularly of those Minerval academies of Illuminism? Can it be for the propagation of science, or the involving mankind again in the disasters of barbarism, that all this parade of science is made? Can these Illuminees resemble the Goths, Huns, or Vandals? And is Europe once more threatened with an inundation of barbarians like those which formerly sallied from the North? In answering such questions, the reader may expect that I would put certain restrictions on the views of the Sect. Nothing like a restriction or qualification. No; you must renounce all the arts, all the sciences; you must begin by firing your habitations, not only your cities, towns, and villages, in short all your fixed habitations, unless you stop the disorganizing career of the Sect. Yes, wherever its legions shall be at liberty to act and accomplish the grand object of the Sect, there you may expect to see those scenes of plunder, rapine, and devastation, which heretofore traced the awful progress of the Huns, Goths, or Vandals; and this inference is fairly drawn from the very Code of the Sect.
Has not the reader heard the Hierophant insinuating the designs of the Sect upon the arts and sciences? Has he not taught the adept to answer, when asked what misfortunes reduced human nature to slavery, that it was civil society, the state, governments, and sciences? Has he not heard him exclaim, When shall the day come when, the clod of useless sciences banished form the earth, man shall recognize no other but the savage or nomade state, and which the Sect styles patriarchal, primitive, natural? Has he not declared, that the happiness and glory of the Sect would be at its zenith when, beholding those happy days, it could say, This is our work? (Wenn die beschleünigung dieser periode, unser werk ist?)23 Are we to be duped by the name of Minerval Academies, with which the Sect decorates its schools? Can we observe there any other study than that of applying the sciences to the subversion of science, as well as to the total annihilation of all religion or society, when we remark the anxiety with which the Sect puts the following questions to the adept on his coming out of these academies, wishing to know what progress he has made in its principles before he is admitted to the illuminized priesthood:
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“Do the general and common sciences to which men apply infuse real light? Do they lead to true happiness? Are they not rather the offspring of variegated wants, or of the anti-natural state in which men exist? Are they not the invention of crazy brains laboriously subtle?” 24 The reader has heard these questions, he has heard the Sect blaspheme science, and will he still believe that Illuminism recognizes any other sciences but those of the man-savage equal and free, roaming in the forests? Have not the revolutionary devastations, the multitude of monuments fallen beneath the hatchet of the Jacobin brigand, already demonstrated the frantic hatred of the modern Vandals? But the mysteries elucidate this enigma in a clearer manner.
Moe is the founder of GnosticWarrior.com. He is a father, husband, author, martial arts black belt, and an expert in Gnosticism, the occult, and esotericism.
