DISCOURSE X.

Delivered at the consecration of King David's Lodge, in Taunton, August, 28, 1799.

ROMANS X. 3.

WE BE SLANDEROUSLY REPORTED, AND SOME AFFIRM THAT WE SAY, LET US DO EVIL THAT GOOD MAY COME.

WHEN partiality is so busily endeav

ouring to render suspicious the best actions, and prejudice so artful in throwing out insinuations to the disadvantage of the worthiest characters, who can expect to escape "the strife of tongues" Especially as the ignorant and the evil minded are ever ready to adopt the surmise, however improbable; and to give currency to the imputation, however unjust.

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EVEN Our blessed Lord, the holy and immaculate Jesus, "was despised and rejected of men." Not all the wonderful works that distinguished his ministry, not the divinity of his preaching, the disinterestedness of his conduct, nor the sanctity of his morals, could secure him from the opposition of party and the rage of malignity. He forewarned his disciples of a similar treatment; and told them that they must expect to meet with unkind usage, bitter reproach, and violent persecution, as well as he.* Accordingly “in every city they had trial of cruel mockings, and scourgings, yea moreover of bonds, and imprisonments, and tortures. They were "a sect every where spoken against." The apostles were reproached as being pestilent, factious, turbulent, and seditious fellows.‡ They were not only accused of conspiring against the government of their nation and the peace of the world; but also, of aiming to overthrow the religious establishment of their own country, and of all others.|| Not only were there imputed to them practices that were dangerous, but principles that were unjust. So St. Paul intimates, in the passage selected as a text, that there were

*Matt. x. 24-26.

Acts xvii. 6.

Heb. xi. 36. Acts xxiv. 5, 6.

|| Acts vi. 13, 14. xviii. 13.

those who charged him and his fellow labourers in the propagation of the gospel, with holding tenets that he destested. He says no more in confutation of the vile imputation than that those who profess and practice upon such a principle deserve and will receive the highest condemnation: but to attribute to him and his associates such a motive, was a false and insidious charge.

THUS WE

see that the best men and the

worthiest conduct may be misrepresented and slanderously reported: and that the purest purposes and the noblest exertions in behalf of virtue, humanity, and peace, have been stigmatized by some, and opposed by others.

THE most unfair and disingenuous, need I add the most successful mode of attack, is to insinuate that the design, however plausible, is mischievous; or, that the end, however commendable, is effected by means reprehensible and unjust.

THE base and vile doctrine of "doing evil that good may come," or, in other words, that "the end justifies the means," has also been alledged against the FREE MASONS. Or, rather, it is expressly asserted of the Jesuits

and Illuminees by authors who designedly implicate and involve our society with those corrupt associations: declaring it to be formed upon the same plan, founded on the same principles, and furthering the same designs.† To be sure they make some reserves and abatements in favour of Free Masonry; but still assert it to be the fatal source to which all these bitter and destructive streams are to be traced‡.

I doubt not, my brethren, but it will strike your minds with surprise and astonishment, not unmixed with indignation and horror, to be informed that our venerable and antient Fraternity is implicated with the infidels, atheists, and disorganizers of the present day in a charge of no less atrocity, than a premeditated design, a long preconcerted plan, to destroy the religion of Christ, to subvert every established government upon earth,

*See Abbe BARRUEL'S history of Jacobinism, v. 3. New York edition, p. 61, 93, and 189. Professor ROBISON, Proofs of a conspiracy against the Religions and Governments of Europe carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, &c."

† BARRUEL, vol. 3, p. 12, note, 91, 136, &c. Professor ROBISON, Philadelphia edit. p. 83, 42, 72, 75, 342, &c.

BARRUEL, vol. 3. p. 11, 38, 41, 52, 87, 152, &c. Professor ROBISON, p. 15, 165, 343, &c. M. Le FRANC, “la voile retiree,"

and to overthrow every system of civil society which the virtuous ingenuity of man has been able to invent, with a view to improve and secure the happiness of the world!*

LOOKING into yourselves, my brethren, and feeling conscious of the purity of your own intentions; referring, too, to the princi. ples of our antient and hitherto respected. institution you are at a loss even to conjecture the motive for fabricating an allegation so unfounded, and bringing forward an imputation so undeserved and so unjust.

By artful insinuations, forced constructions, and palpable misrepresentations, modern alarmists have ascribed to the Free

The Abbe BARRUEL has this assertion: "Irreligion and unqualified Liberty and Equality are the genuine and original secrets of Free Masonry, and the ultimatum of a regular progress through all its degrees." And Professor ROBISON declares, that "the Mason Lodges in France were the hot-beds, where the seeds were sown and tenderly reared of all the pernicious doctrines which soon after choaked every moral or religious cultivation, and have made the Society worse than a waste, have made it a noisome marsh of human corruption, filled with every rank and poisonous weed." And again; Germany has experienced the same gradual progress from Religion to Atheism, from decency to dissoluteness, and from loyalty to rebellion, which has had its course in France. And I must now add, that this progress has been effected in the same manner, and by the same means; aud that one of the chief means of seduction has been the Lodges of Free Masons."