but by no means _against_ him; and the persons who are most in fault are the slavish inquisitors, who have published the transaction, in order to make his character more remarkable, and to hurt the Order through his person; and they have not scrupled, for this hellish purpose, to stir up a child against his father!!!" [7] This is flatly contradicted in a pamphlet by F. Stuttler, a Catholic clergyman of most respectable character, who here exposes, in the most incontrovertible manner, the impious plots of Weishaupt, his total disregard to truth, his counterfeit antiques, and all his lies against the Jesuits. I make no reflections on this very remarkable, and highly useful story, but content myself with saying, that this justification by Weishaupt (which I have been careful to give in his own words) is the greatest instance of effrontery and insult on the sentiments of mankind that I have ever met with. We are all supposed as completely corrupted as if we had lived under the full blaze of Illumination. In other places of this curious correspondence we learn that Minos, and others of the _Areopagitæ_, wanted to introduce Atheism at once, and not go hedging in the manner they did; affirming it was easier to shew at once that Atheism was friendly to society, than to explain all their Masonic Christianity, which they were afterwards to shew to be a bundle of lies. Indeed this purpose, of not only abolishing Christianity, but all positive religion whatever, was Weishaupt's favourite scheme from the beginning. Before he canvassed for his Order, in 1774, he published a fictitious antique, which he called _Sidonii Apollinarus Fragmenta_, to prepare (as he expressly says in another place) mens minds for the doctrines of Reason, which contains all the detestable doctrines of Robinet's book _De la Nature_. The publication of the second part was stopped. Weishaupt says in his APOLOGY FOR THE ILLUMINATI, that before 1780 he had retracted his opinions about Materialism, and about the inexpediency of Princes. But this is false: Philo says expressly, that every thing remained on its original footing in the whole practice and dogmas of the Order when he quitted it in July 1784. All this was concealed, and even the abominable Masonry, in the account of the Order which Weishaupt published at Regensburg; and it required the constant efforts of Philo to prevent bare or flat Atheism from being uniformly taught in their degrees. He had told the council that Zeno would not be under a roof with a man who denied the immortality of the soul. He complains of Minos's cramming irreligion down their throats in every meeting, and says, that he frightened many from entering the Order. "Truth," says Philo, "is a clever, but a modest girl, who must be led by the hand like a gentlewoman, but not kicked about like a whore." Spartacus complains much of the squeamishness of Philo; yet Philo is not a great deal behind him in irreligion.