Miscellanies Author:Charles Bradlaugh Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: WHAT FBEEMASONBY IS, WHAT IT HAS BEEN, And WHAT IT OUGHT TO BE. In a speech made in November, 1883, by his Eoyal Highness the Prince of Wales, as the Grand Ma... more »ster of the Grand Lodge of England, he declared that Freemasonry "must be religious," and that " as long as religion remains engrafted in the hearts of the craft in our country, the craft is certain to flourish ; and be assured of this, brethren," he adds, "that when religion in it ceases, the craft will also lose its power and its stability ". Th1s is not at all the view of Freemasonry taken by the present Pope, as may be seen by reference to the encyclical letter of 20th April, 1884, in which he declares that by the jealousy of the devil the world is divided into two hostile camps, one for, and the other against, all virtue and truth. In the last-named the Pope puts all Freemasons. " In our time ", he says, " the doers of ovil appear to have coalesced, by an immense effort, prompted and aided by a wide-spread and strongly-organised society, ' the Freemasons'. These in effect do not give themselves the trouble to disguise their intent, and they rival each other in audacity against God's august majesty. Publicly and in the face of Heaven they undertake to ruin the holy church, in order, if it be possible, to completely rob Christian nations of the benefits owing to the Savior Jesus Christ." Pope Leo XIII. reminds the members of the Eoman Catholic Church that his predecessor Clement XII., on 24th April, 1738, first denounced Freemasonry, and that this denunciation was confirmed by Benoit XIV., on the 18th May, 1751. Fornearly three-quarters of a century the occupants of the Papal chair were apparently silent; but in 1821 Pius VII. followed in the steps of Clement and Benoit. On the 13th March, 1825, Pope Leo XII., in the Ap...« less