The _Aurora_ steered a similar course. Drawing upon the _Bee_, the text of the alleged Ebeling-Morse letter was printed[845] and the accompanying comment made that this effectually disposed of the Illuminati.[846] It was now fully apparent that Morse had seized upon the idea of a conspiracy against religion and the state in order to further selfish and partisan ends. He and Dr. Dwight, who were at the head of the clerical systems in Massachusetts and Connecticut respectively, were exhausting all the means in their power to exalt Federalism and to obtain a religious establishment which would deliver the consciences and purses of the nation into the hands of their party.[847] The rancor that these two men had recently stirred up against the respectable fraternity of Freemasons was due solely to their bigotry.[848] Meantime a certain shrewd and none too scrupulous Democratic clergyman in Massachusetts was deriving such satisfaction as he could out of Morse’s discomfiture and bitter resentment. The letter that the _Bee_ and the _Aurora_ published as a letter from Ebeling to Morse was in fact a letter from Ebeling to William Bentley,[849] inveterate hater of Morse.[850] Ebeling, it appears, had written the letters to Bentley and to Morse at about the same time.[851] A little after the receipt of his letter, Bentley had learned from Ebeling that Doctors Pearson, Tappan, and Morse all were inquiring of Ebeling concerning Robison’s standing as a historian, and that the Hamburg professor had addressed Morse at length upon the subject.[852] Further, he received clear hints from Ebeling as to the precise nature of the communications to Morse.[853] Bentley, therefore, had substantial reasons for believing that he was in full possession of the information that Ebeling had furnished Morse regarding the subsidence of the Illuminati craze in Europe and the unfavorable opinions of Robison that were entertained on the other side of the Atlantic. It certainly was not to his credit, however, that he should permit a letter which he himself had received from Ebeling to be published as a communication from Ebeling to Morse.[854] Under the circumstances, Morse was placed in a position of embarrassment and humiliation from which he found it impossible wholly to extricate himself.[855] What is more to the point, the cause which in his misguided zeal he had been promoting was thus made to suffer an irreparable blow. With his personal integrity under grave suspicion and his main European ally held up to public ridicule and scorn, even Morse’s obdurate spirit must have foreseen that the collapse of the agitation which he had fostered could not long be deferred. Even without this tumble into the slough of suspicion and contempt, time must soon have brushed aside as groundless the alarm that Morse had sounded. It is not difficult to imagine, however, that time might have found ways less vindictive and scurvy to dispose of the excited clamor of Morse.