In another letter to Cato, we have some hints of the higher degrees, and concerning a peculiar morality, and a popular religion, which the Order was one day to give the world. He says, "There must (_a la Jesuite_) not a single purpose ever come in sight that is ambiguous, and that may betray our aims against religion and the state. One must speak sometimes one way and sometimes another, but so as never to contradict ourselves, and so that, with respect to our true way of thinking, we may be impenetrable. When our strongest things chance to give offence, they must be explained as attempts to draw answers which discover to us the sentiments of the person we converse with." N. B. This did not always succeed with him. Spartacus says, speaking of the priests degree, "One would almost imagine, that this degree, as I have managed it, is genuine Christianity, and that its end was to free the Jews from slavery. I say, that Free Masonry is concealed Christianity. My explanation of the hieroglyphics, at least, proceeds on this supposition; and as I explain things, no man need be ashamed of being a Christian. Indeed I afterwards throw away this name, and substitute _Reason_. But I assure you this is no small affair; a new religion, and a new state-government, which so happily explain one and all of these symbols, and combine them in one degree. You may think that this is my chief work; but I have three other degrees, all different, for my class of higher mysteries, in comparison with which this is but child's play; but these I keep for myself as General, to be bestowed by me only on the _Benemeritissimi_," (surely such as Cato, his dearest friend, and the possessor of such pretty secrets, as abortives, poisons, pestilential vapours, &c.). "The promoted may be Areopagites or not. Were you here I should give you this degree without hesitation. But it is too important to be intrusted to paper, or to be bestowed otherwise than from my own hand. It is the key to history, to religion, and to every state-government in the world."[5] [5] I observe, in other parts of his correspondence where he speaks of this, several singular phrases, which are to be found in two books; _Antiqueté devoilée par ses Usages_, and _Origine du Despotisme Oriental_. These contain indeed much of the maxims inculcated in the reception discourse of the degree _Illumanitus Minor_. Indeed I have found, that Weishaupt is much less an inventor than he is generally thought. Spartacus proceeds, "There shall be but three copies for all Germany. You can't imagine what respect and curiosity my priest-degree has raised; and, which is wonderful, a famous Protestant divine, who is now of the Order, is persuaded that the religion contained in it is the true sense of Christianity. O MAN, MAN! TO WHAT MAY'ST THOU NOT BE PERSUADED. Who would imagine that I was to be the founder of a new religion?"