Why in the face of all this should any British Masons take up the cudgels for the Illuminati and vilify Robison and Barruel for exposing them? The American Mackey, as a consistent Freemason, shows scant sympathy for this traitor in the masonic camp. "Weishaupt," he writes, "was a radical in politics and an infidel in religion, and he organized this association, not more for the purpose of aggrandizing himself, than of overturning Christianity and the institutions of society." And in a footnote he adds that Robison's _Proofs of a Conspiracy_ "contain a very excellent exposition of the nature of this pseudo-masonic institution."[530] The truth is that Weishaupt was one of the greatest enemies of British Freemasonry who ever lived, and genuine Freemasons will do themselves no good by defending him or his abominable system. Let us now see how far, apart from their rôle in Masonry, the Illuminati can be regarded as noble idealists striving for the welfare of the human race. Idealism of the Illuminati The line of defence adopted by the apologists of the Illuminati is always to quote the admirable principles professed by the Order, the "beautiful ideas" that run through their writings, and to show what excellent people were to be found amongst them. Of course on their face value the Illuminati appear wholly admirable, of course there is nothing easier than to find innumerable passages in their writings breathing a spirit of the loftiest aspiration, and of course many excellent men figured amongst the patrons of the Order. All this is the mere stock-in-trade of the secret society leader as of the fraudulent company promoter, to whom the first essentials are a glowing prospectus and a long list of highly respectable patrons who know nothing whatever about the inner workings of the concern. These methods, pursued as early as the ninth century by Abdullah ibn Maymūn, enter largely into the policy of Frederick the Great, Voltaire, and his "brothers" in philosophy--or in Freemasonry. The resemblances between Weishaupt's correspondence and that of Voltaire and of Frederick the Great are certainly very striking. All at moments profess respect for Christianity whilst working to destroy it. Thus just as Voltaire in one letter to d'Alembert expresses his horror at the publication of an anti-Christian pamphlet, _Le Testament de Jean Meslier,[531]_ and in another urges him to have it circulated in thousands all over France,[532] so Weishaupt is careful in general to exhibit the face of a benign philosopher and even of a Christian evangelist; it is only at moments that he drops the mask and reveals the grinning satyr behind it. Accordingly in the published statutes of the Illuminati no hint of subversive intentions will be found; indeed the "Obligation" expressly states that "nothing against the State, religion, or morals is undertaken."