custom—­Conscience and remorse are nothing but the foresight of those physical penalties to which crimes expose us—­The man who is above the law, can commit, without remorse, the dishonest act that may serve his purpose—­The fear of God, so far from being the beginning of wisdom, should be the beginning of folly—­The command to love one’s parents is more the work of education than of nature—­Modesty is only an invention of refined voluptuousness—­The law which condemns married people to live together, becomes barbarous and cruel on the day they cease to love one another.

“Such were the atrocious sentiments, though sometimes artfully veiled, which were disseminated in their books, and which, spreading all over Europe, imperceptibly took possession of the public mind, and prepared the way for the subversion of religion, morals, and government.  As soon as the sale of the works was sufficient to pay expenses, inferior editions were printed and given away, or sold at a very low price; circulating libraries of them were formed, and reading societies instituted.  While they constantly denied these productions to the world, they contrived to give them a false celebrity through their confidential agents and correspondents, who were not themselves always trusted with the entire secret.

“By degrees they got possession nearly of all the reviews and periodical publications; established a general intercourse, by means of hawkers and pedlars, with the distant provinces; and instituted an office to supply all schools with teachers; and thus did they acquire unprecedented dominion over every species of literature, over the minds of all ranks of people, and the education of the youth, without giving any alarm to the world.  The lovers of wit and polite literature were caught by Voltaire; the men of science were perverted, and children corrupted in the first rudiments of learning, by D’Alembert and Diderot; stronger appetites were fed by the secret club of Baron Holbach; the imaginations of the higher orders were set dangerously afloat by Montesquieu; and the multitude of all ranks was surprised, confounded, and hurried away by Rousseau.  Thus was the public mind in France completely corrupted, and the way prepared for the dreadful scenes that followed.”

But there is also another chapter to the dark history of this “noisome and grievous sore.”  The same author says again: 

“After Voltaire had broached his system of infidel philosophy, and brought it unto perfection, it was taken up by the celebrated Dr. Adam Weishaupt, professor of canon law in the University of Ingolstadt, and by him perfected as a system of light or illuminism.  On the 1st of May, 1776, he founded, among the students of the above-named University, a secret society under the name of the Illuminati, whose avowed object was to diffuse the light of science, these secret societies being so many radiating centers of light.  But the science taught was the most atrocious infidelity,