Chapter 13 THE SECRET BRIDGE. Rulers of Evil by F. Tupper Saussy in HTML Web Format
Rulers of Evil by F. Tupper Saussy in HTML Web Format
Chapter 13 THE SECRET BRIDGE
“The papal prohibition might even have encouraged Masonry by identifying opposition to the group with Catholic tyranny and superstition.” — STEVEN C . BULLOCK, REVOLUTIONARY BROTHERHOOD, 1996
THE New Catholic Encyclopedia identifies the men who attacked the Society of Jesus as “the radical devotees of the rationalistic Enlightenment – richly talented and influential writers, such as Voltaire, Rousseau, and other ‘philosophes’ among the Encyclopedists, the followers of Freemasonry, and high placed government officials.” Attacking the Jesuits was for them “a step toward their ultimate objective of abolishing all religious orders, the papacy, and finally the Church itself.”
The masterpiece of the encyclopedists (most of whom happened
to be philosophes), was the
monumental Encyclopedia of Sciences, Arts, and Trades
(1743-1751). The Encyclopedia was the flame of the Enlightenment, the
fulfillment of Cardinal Wolsey’s dream of flooding the world with print
containing “learning against learning.” It brought so much learning (secular
learning, as against
Nowhere was Deism more methodically practiced than “around the altars of Freemasonry,” as the great Masonic scholar Albert Pike put it. Here, wrote Pike in his influential Morals and Dogma (1871), “the Christian, the Hebrew, the Moslem, the Brahmin, the followers of Confucius and Zoroaster, can assemble as brethren and unite in prayer to the one God who is above all gods.” The brethren prayerfully climb the gnostic pyramid of successive illumination until, hopefully, a oneness with the supreme God is attained. As Pike explained, the Deists (like the papacy) looked upon the Bible as something of a stumbling block:
The Freemason does not pretend to dogmatic certainty, nor
vainly imagine such certainty attainable. He considers that if there were no
written revelation, he could safely rest the hopes that animate him and the
principles that guide him, on the deductions of reason and the convictions of
instinct and consciousness.
He studies the wonders of the Heavens, the framework and revolutions of the
Earth, the mysterious beauties and adaptations of animal existence, the moral
and material constitution of the human creature, so fearfully and wonderfully
made; and is satisfied that God IS….
Most of the philosophes, including Frederick the Great, the
Protestant King of Prussia who subsidized the entire Encyclopedia project, were
Deistic brethren. As were the “high placed government officials” who pushed for
the disestablishment of the Jesuits. All the Bourbon monarchs employed as their
official advisors “ardent members of the Lodge,” to use Professor Martin’s
phrase.1 The Marquis de Pombal of Portugal was a Mason. Charles Ill’s advisor
the Count de Aranda, Louis XV’s Minister de Tillot and the Duc de Choiseul, as
well as Maria-Theresa’s Prince von Kaunitz and Gerard von Swieten – all
belonged to the secret brotherhood.
Since it was no secret that the Enlightenment aimed to make Roman Catholicism
passée, Pope Clement XII promulgated in 1728 the constitution In eminenti,
which appeared to condemn Freemasonry thusly:
CONDEMNATIO SOCIETATIS DE CONVENTICULORUM DE FREEMASONS,
UNDER THE PENALTY IPSO FACTO INCURRED, OR EXCOMMUNICATION; ABSOLUTION FROM IT
BEING RESERVED TO PONTIFEX MAXIMUS
Free Masons of whatever sect or religion, confederate together in a close and
inscrutable bond, according to secret laws and orders agreed upon between them,
and bind themselves as well by strict oath taken on the Bible as by the
imprecations of heavy punishments to preserve their mysteries with inviolable
secrecy
The great mischiefs which generally accrue from secret bodies are antagonist to
civil and canonical laws.
Wherefore, by the advice of the cardinals and of our mere motion, and from the
plenitude of the apostolic power, we do condemn and prohibit the meetings of
the above-named society of Free Masons.
We strictly command that no one, under any pretext or color, dare to presume to
promote, favor, admit, or conceal in their houses members of assemblies of this
abominable order, nor in any way aid or assist in their meeting in any place,
or to administer medicine to them in their sickness, or in any manner, directly
or indirectly, by themselves or others, afford them counsel or help in their
hour of trial and affliction, or persuade others to join said Order….
While Eminenti’s stern rhetoric, which was renewed by
Benedict XIV in 1751, seems to dig a wide ocean between Catholicism and Freemasonry,
its fruits tell another story. Why, for example, were the Bourbon monarchs, all
of them Roman Catholic, never penalized or excommunicated for admitting,
promoting, and favoring Masonic advisors? And why, a decade after the Marquis
de Pombal had shipped the Jesuits out of Portugal, did Clement XIV send an
appeasing nuncio to the Portuguese court, elevate Pombal’s brother to Bishop,
and confirm all Pombal’s nominees in bishoprics? 2 The answer, of
course, is contained in the bull’s title, which provides that absolution from
penalties or excommunication is “reserved to Pontifex Maximus.” That is to say,
associating with the abomination of Freemasonry, if done for a cause valuable
to the papacy (such as weakening the Jesuits to the point everybody assumes
they’re no longer a threat to Protestantism), will be absolved by the papacy.
Given the historical context, does any other answer make sense?
The leading Jesuit-bashers were not only Freemasons, they were also the product
of Jesuit learning against learning. It was the ratio studiorum – the Medici
Library’s gnostic wisdom absorbed in an ambiance of casuistry, equivocation,
mental reservation, and obedience of the understanding, combined with
smatterings of Holy Scripture usually filtered through the commentaries of
Church doctors – that had turned two centuries of Jesuited students into
secular philosophes. The ratio studiorum dictated the form and scope of the
Encyclopedia, which in turn codified the Enlightenment paradigm, whose Deistic
litany was preached “around the altars of Freemasonry.”
Hold Freemasonry up to the light and you cannot help but see the black papacy’s
watermark. Isn’t it reasonable, given the circumstances, that the “G” in the
center of the familiar Masonic emblem represents the initial of “Gesu,” the
residence of the black popes at the Jesuits’ world headquarters at Number 5,
Borgo Sancto Spiritu, in Rome? Freemasons wouldn’t suspect this, nor would
Jesuits. It would be information reserved uniquely to the unknown superior, who
shares what he knows with no one. “Your enemies will serve you without their
wishes,” said Sun-tzu, “or even their knowledge.”
Freemasonry was the natural, the reasonable, the only intelligent way for the
Roman Catholic Church to control (a) the ongoing affront of Protestantism, (b)
the increase in “divine right” kings heading their own national churches
independent of Vatican control, and (c) the incredible explosion of
international mercantilism. Like the aquatic creature whose mouth resembles a
comfortable resting place to its prey, the Lodges were a sagacious recycling of
the old Templar infrastructure into a dynamic spiritual and economic
brotherhood that gave Protestants, Jews, Buddhists, Muslims, agnostics, and
anyone else an opportunity to build a better life outside Roman Catholicism,
yet still under the Church’s superintending eye. For Sun-tzu said, “The General
sees all, hears all, does all, and in appearance is not involved with
anything.” The Jesuit General is the disembodied eye substituting for the
pyramid’s missing capstone, the stone the builders rejected.
The Lodge’s secrecy and its condemnation by the Church were essential to
sustaining the integrity of both institutions. And so the deepest Masonic
secret, the secret that not even their Grandest Masters could penetrate, was
that all their secrets were known to one man alone, the Superior General of the
Society of Jesus. This should not surprise anyone aware of how thoroughly
Freemasonry is suffused with Jesuitic technique. Both Freemasonry and the
Society of Jesus are (a) humanist religious orders, (b) secretive, (c)
fraternal, (d) socially conscientious and politically active – questing, like
Aeneas, the prototypical Roman, for the greatest good for the greatest number.
Both orders (e) hold Tradition, Reason, and Experience in equal if not greater
esteem than the Bible, (f) employ carefully structured programs of gnostic
visualization to achieve an ever-increasing knowledge of the divine, (g)
condone “the end justifies the means,” and (h) require absolute obedience,
secured by a blood oath, to a hierarchy of superiors culminating in the Jesuit
General, whose orders are so wisely suited to the recipient that they are
obeyed as though willed by the recipient himself.
THE first recorded member of American Freemasonry was Daniel Coxe, who was constituted Provincial Grand Master of the provinces of New York, New Jersey, and Pennsylvania on June 5, 1730, on a deputation granted by the Duke of Norfolk, Grand Master of Masons in England.5 Evidently, Coxe was an industrious recruiter. Minutes of a meeting of the Grand Lodge of London on January 29, 1731 reflect that “Coxe’s health was proposed and drank [sic] as ‘Provincial Grand Master of North America.’”
Daniel Coxe was actually a junior, according to Sidney
Hayden’s Washington and His Compeers (1868). He was “the son of Dr. Daniel Coxe
of England, who was physician to the Queen of Charles II.” Dr. Coxe must be
presumed a Roman Catholic sympathizer, as both Charles and his Queen were
Catholics. The Queen, Catherine of Braganza (Portugal), flaunted a huge Vatican
entourage, for which she was continually harassed by death plots. Charles
converted to Catholicism in exchange for money from Louis XIV of France under
the terms of the Treaty of Dover.
The junior Daniel Coxe deserves wider recognition as an American visionary, or
at least the sole apologist of some undisclosed visionary. Thirteen years
before Benjamin Franklin’s proposal of a “colonial Union” to the Albany
congress in 1754, for which Franklin is credited with being the first to
suggest a “united States,” Coxe published in England a dissertation promoting a
scheme to settle “an extensive tract of country lying on the Gulf of Mexico”
owned by his father, the Queen’s physician. The dissertation, entitled A
Description of the English Province of Carolina, by the Spaniards called
Florida, and by the French La Louisiane, promoted the elder Coxe’s tract as an
English province allied with New England against the Spanish, French, and
Indians. It called for “all the colonies appertaining to the crown of Great
Britain, on the northern continent of America, [to] be united under a legal,
regular, and firm establishment; over which a lieutenant or supreme governor
may be constituted and appointed to preside on the spot, to whom the governors
of each colony shall be subordinate.” With this union of governments under one
president, Coxe foresaw “a great council or general convention of the estates
of the colonies” to “meet together, consult and advise for the good of the
whole.” These “united states” would provide “for their mutual defense and
safety, as well as, if necessary, for offense and invasion of their enemies” –
independently of the protections of the British Crown. Of course, these
imaginings became reality forty years later with the fulfillment of Lorenzo
Ricci’s strategy for dividing the British Empire. Considering the elements
involved – lands owned by the Catholic Queen’s physician, lands managed and
promoted by the physician’s son, who is a Freemason deputed to generate an
American brotherhood by the eighth Duke of Norfolk, who himself was a member of
England’s premier Roman Catholic family – Coxe’s dissertation appears to be the
earliest formatting of the colonial conscience to divisive thinking by agents
of the black papacy.
The Duke of Norfolk, “Grand Master of Masons in England,” was also known as
Thomas Howard, Earl of Arundell. His nephew, Henry, Lord Arundell, occupied
Wardour Castle near Tisbury in Wiltshire at the time Clement XIV disestablished
the Jesuits. We shall see how, in the autumn of 1773, it was to Lord Arundell’s
castle that John Carroll repaired when civil authorities closeci down the
Jesuit school in Liège, Belgium, where Carroll had been teaching. For a year
Carroll stayed at Wardour, serving as the Arundell family’s tutor and chaplain
before sailing for America to participate in the Revolution.
THIRTY-THIRD degree Masonic scholar Manly P. Hall, in his gnostic extravaganza Secret Teachings of All Ages: An Encyclopedic Outline of Masonic, Hermetic, Qabbalistic and Rosicrucian Symbolical Philosophy (1988), remarked that “not only were many founders of the United States Government Masons, but they received aid from a secret and August body existing in Europe, which helped them to establish this country for a peculiar and particular purpose known only to the initiated few.”
Most histories of the American Government skim over the
Masonic presence. Americans like their history told in high-definition icons of
good and evil, liberty and tyranny, heroism and treason, might and right. They
won’t buy a heritage polluted by dark spots of mystery. Yet the greater part of
American governmental heritage is almost wholly mysterious.
The man best qualified to become our country’s greatest historian, certainly
the man with the most complete access to primary sources in the Revolutionary
cause, was Charles Thomson. An authentic classical scholar, a discreet
Protestant steeped in Medici learning, Thomson was known as “Perpetual
Secretary of the Continental Congress.” He inscribed minutes of every
Congressional session from 1774 until ratification of the Constitution in 1789.
With William Barton, a Freemason, he designed the Great Seal of the United
States of America: the choice of its Virgilian mottoes is credited exclusively
to Thomson.
Among his contemporaries, Charles Thomson’s name was synonymous with Truth. So
accurate were his minutes of Pennsylvania’s negotiations with the Delaware
Indians that the Delawares called him Wegh-wu-law-mo-end, “the man who talks
the truth.” When he would take his daily reports of congressional proceedings
to the streets, eager mobs would cry “Here comes Charles Thomson! Here comes
the Truth!”
Once the Constitution was ratified, Charles Thomson retired to Harriton, his
country home in Bryn Mawr. He destroyed his personal papers relative to the
creation of the new republic. An article by Kenneth Boling in the Pennsylvania
Magazine of History and Biography (1976) says that Thomson actually wrote a
lengthy history of the Revolution, which he also destroyed. Thomson biographer
J. Edwin Hendricks of Wake Forest suggests a fate other than destruction,
alluding to “persistent rumors that the Thomson papers are in the Pennsylvania
Masonic records.” (Professor Hendricks assured me personally that numerous
inquiries have failed to reflect Thomson’s membership in Pennsylvania Masonry.)
Whether Thomson destroyed his history or surrendered it to the crypt of
secrecy, it is clear that he knew there were certain elements in the formation
of American government that must, must be ignored. “If the truth were known,”
he told friends darkly, “many careers would be tarnished and the leadership of
the nation would be weakened.”4
And so Charles Thomson occupied the remaining forty years of his life
translating the Septuagint, the Greek-language Bible, into English. Still, he
was frequently requested to write the definitive insider’s history of the
Revolution. Dr. Benjamin Rush overheard Thomson’s reply to one such request and
recorded it in his diary:
“No,” said he, “I ought not, for I should contradict all the histories of the
great events of the Revolution, and shew by my account of men, motives and
measures, that we are wholly indebted to the agency of Providence for its
successful issue. Let the world admire the supposed wisdom and valor of our
great men. Perhaps they may adopt the qualities that have been ascribed to
them, and thus good may be done. I shall not undeceive future generations.”5
What I believe Thomson was meaning to say is simply that no historical account
of the American Revolution can be truthful unless it discloses the role played
by “the agency of Providence.” Notice that Thomson does not use the word
“Providence” alone, which was understood in his day to mean “God” or “Christ.”
He does not say “we are wholly indebted to God,” or “we are wholly indebted to
Christ,” but rather to the “agency” thereof.
If Thomson knew the word “agency” was a synonym for “vicar,” and I can’t
imagine that a professional linguist wouldn’t, and if he knew that the popes
had been called “vicars of Christ” since the fifth century, and I can’t imagine
that a biblical scholar of his quality wouldn’t, then Thomson was most likely
saying “We are wholly indebted to the Vicar of Christ, that is, the Roman
papacy.”
But what a ridiculous statement to the post-Revolutionary American mindset! Who
would have believed such an outrageous notion, coming from even the man who
talks the truth? The embattled, degenerate, dying papacy could not possibly
have effected the Revolution! Anyone foolish enough to run with this idea would
have crashed headlong into a wall of ridicule. For Thomson, there was no future
in telling what he knew. Since he chose not to undeceive future generations,
the American people have lived according to histories that can be contradicted
by truth. They have been served by careers and leaders that truth could tarnish
and weaken. They seem comfortable in their deception, which is generally the
case among consenting subjects to Roman rule.
Let’s move now to the next chapter, wherein we shall see how the Jesuits, which
we now recognize as the unsung architects of the Enlightenment, supplied the
American colonists a philosophical basis for rebelling against Great Britain.
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