A SURVIVAL OF MEDIEVAL CREDULITY. 579 



mj many blasphemies! Pardon all the evil I have wrought! ' I 

 passed the night in prayer, and resolved on the next day to seek 

 absolution for my sins." He retired from the editorship of the 

 Republique Anti-Clericale, and handed in his resignation at a meet- 

 ing of the " Anti-Clerical League," of which he was the founder 

 and hitherto the most active member, when he had the satisfaction 

 of being denounced by the presiding officer as a comedian and scoun- 

 drel. 1^0 one of his former colleagues believed in his sincerity, 

 and yet every one was puzzled to understand the strategic pur- 

 pose of this retrograde movement. The general impression was 

 that he had been bribed. " You can't fool us by your abjuration! " 

 they exclaimed. " The fact is, you have received a large sum of 

 money from the Vatican." He does not seem to have attempted 

 to refute these charges, nor did he permit them to divert him from 

 the execution of his deep-laid plot. With hypocritical humility, 

 he made full confession to the papal nuncio in Paris, Monsignore 

 Di Rende, who, after subjecting him to several days' penance, em- 

 braced him with joy and released him from all excommunications 

 and ecclesiastical censures. 



Taxil now began to issue his Complete Revelations concerning 

 Freemasonry, in four volumes, the ostensible object of which was 

 to expose the secret and sacrilegious rites of this order as an or- 

 ganized system of devil-worship, thus confirming by the testimony 

 of an eyewitness the assertions of the Popes, and proving that their 

 decrees and decisions on this point had been bulls in the ecclesias- 

 tical and not in the Irish sense of the term. This work, although 

 a mere tissue of fabrications, was greeted by the Catholic press 

 and priesthood with exultation, as an authentic narration contain- 

 ing positive and irrefutable proofs of the diabolic character of the 

 Masonic mysteries. The members of this fraternity, says Taxil, 

 regard the God of the Catholics as an evil principle — a crafty, jeal- 

 ous, and cruel genius, a supernal tyrant, and archenemy of human 

 happiness. Opposed to him is Lucifer, the good genius, the peren- 

 nial source of virtue and wisdom, the spirit of freedom, and the 

 friend of mankind. Por this reason, in the high-grade lodges Luci- 

 fer, the reputed father of Cain, Canaan, and Hiram, is adored, 

 under different names indicative of the Supreme Being, as the God 

 of Nature, and the great architect of the universe. In short, while 

 modern freethinking is atheistic and begets a skepticism which, 

 even when not denying God, does not care for him. Freemasonry is 

 essentially a Satanic cult. These words give the sum and substance 

 of the supposititious disclosures which excited such intense joy in 

 the clerical camp. In 1887, when Taxil was received in solemn 

 audience by Leo XIII, " My son," asked the Pope, " what dost thou 



