As to the origin of this esoteric influence, the impartial historical enquirer cannot doubt (whatever motives or views some may have to deny the fact, or throw doubt on its authenticity), that the order of Templars was the channel by which this society in its ancient and long preserved form was introduced into the West. The religious _Masonic_ symbols may be accounted for by the Solomonian traditions connected with the very foundation of the order of Templars; and indeed the occasion of these symbols may be traced in other passages of Holy Writ, and in other parts of sacred history, and they may very well admit of a Christian interpretation. Traces of these symbols may be found in the monuments of the old German architecture of the middle age. Any secret spiritual association, however, diffused at once among Christians and Mahometans, cannot be of a very Christian nature, nor long continue so. Nay the very idea of an esoteric society for the propagation of any secret doctrines is not compatible with the very principle of Christianity itself; for Christianity is a divine mystery, which according to the intention of its divine Founder, lies open to all, and is daily exposed on every altar. For this reason, in a Revelation imparted to all alike, there can be no secrecy, as in the Pagan mysteries, where by the side of the popular mythology and the public religion of the state, certain esoteric doctrines were inculcated to the initiated only. This would be to constitute a church within a church--a measure to be as little tolerated or justified, as an Imperium in Imperio; and in an age where worldly interests and public or secret views of policy have far greater ascendancy than religious opinions or sentiments, such a secret parasitical church would unquestionably, as experience has already proved, be very soon transformed into a secret directory for political changes and Revolutions. That in this society the un-christian principles of a negative Illuminism, veiled as they often were in sentiments of universal philanthropy, were of a date tolerably modern, all historical analogies would lead us to suppose. On the other hand, the Christian opinions which survived in this order, (though in our times, amid the innumerable factions which have agitated this society by their contests, the adherents to Christian principles form a small minority of its members,) the Christian opinions surviving in this order partook, conformably to the historical origin I have assigned, more of an oriental and Gnostic character. The great, or at least, not inconsiderable influence which this society exercises in politics, we may discover in those Revolutions, which after having convulsed our quarter of the globe, have rolled onwards to the new world, where the two principal Revolutionary factions in one of those South American states, whose troubles are not yet terminated, are called the Scots and the Yorkists, from the two parties which divide the English Masonic lodges.