Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe: carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and reading societies.Robison, John
History
Proofs of a Conspiracy against all the Religions and Governments of Europe: carried on in the secret meetings of Free Masons, Illuminati, and reading societies.
Robison, John
Freemasonry -- Early works to 1800; Illuminati -- Early works to 1800
----Peace to all such;----but to the "_felices animæ, quibus hæc
cognoscere cura_;"--to those who _have enjoyed_ the pleasures of
science, who have been successful--who have made discoveries--who
have really illuminated the world--to the Bacons, the Newtons,
the Lockes.--Allow me to mention one, Daniel Bernoulli, the most
elegant mathematician, the only philosopher, and the most worthy
man, of that celebrated family. He said to a gentleman, (Dr.
Staehling,) who repeated it to me, that "when reading some of those
wonderful guesses of Sir Isaac Newton, the subsequent demonstration
of which has been the chief source of fame to his most celebrated
commentators--his mind has sometimes been so overpowered by
thrilling emotions, that he has wished that moment to be his last;
and that it was this which gave him the clearest conception of the
happiness of heaven." If such delightful emotions could be excited
by the perception of mere truth, what must they be when each of
these truths is an instance of wisdom, and when we recollect, that
what we call wisdom in the works of nature, is always the nice
adaptation of means for producing _beneficent_ ends; and that each
of these affecting qualities is susceptible of degrees which are
boundless, and exceed our highest conceptions? What can this complex
emotion or feeling be but rapture? But Bernoulli is a Doctor of
Theology--and therefore a suspicious person, perhaps one of the
combination hired by despots to enslave us. I will take another man,
a gentleman of rank and family, a soldier, who often signalised
himself as a naval commander--who at one time forced his way through
a powerful fleet of the Venetians with a small squadron, and brought
relief to a distressed garrison. I would desire the reader to peruse
the conclusion of Sir Kenhelm Digby's _Treatises on Body and Mind_;
and after having reflected on the state of science at the time this
author wrote, let him coolly weigh the incitements to manly conduct
which this soldier finds in the differences observed between body
and mind; and then let him say, on his conscience, whether they are
more feeble than those which he can draw from the eternal sleep of
death. If he thinks that they are--he is in the proper frame for
initiation into Spartacus's higher mysteries. He may be either MAGUS
or REX.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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