The fact that Masonry in Protestant countries is neither revolutionary nor anti-religious is frequently used by Catholic writers to show that Protestantism identifies itself with the aims of Masonry, and by Freemasons to prove that the tyranny of the Church of Rome has driven Masonry into an attitude hostile to Church and State. The point overlooked in both these contentions is the essential difference in the character of the two kinds of Masonry. If the Grand Orient had adhered to the fundamental principle of British Masonry not to concern itself with religion or politics, there is no reason why it should have come into conflict with the Church. But its duplicity on this point is apparent. Thus in one of its earlier manuals it declares, like British Masonry, that it "never interferes with questions of government or of civil and religious legislation, and that whilst making its members participate in the perfecting of all sciences, it positively excepts in the lodges two of the most beautiful, _politics_ and _theology_, because these two sciences divide men and nations which Masonry constantly tends to unite."[661] But on a further page of the same manual from which this quotation is taken we find it stated that Masonry is simply "the political application of Christianity."[662] Indeed, during the last fifty years the Grand Orient has thrown off the mask and openly declared itself to be political in its aims. In October 1887 the Venerable Bro∴ Blanc said in a discourse which was printed for the lodges: You recognise with me, my brothers, the necessity for Freemasonry to become a vast and powerful political and social society having a decisive influence on the resolutions of the Republican government.[663] And in 1890 the Freemason Fernand Maurice declared "that nothing should happen in France without the hidden action of Freemasonry," and "if the Masons choose to organize, in ten years' time no one in France will be able to move outside us (_personne ne bougera plus en France en dehors de nous_)."[664] This is the despotic power which the Grand Orient has established in opposition to both Church and Government.