this quotation is taken we find it stated that Masonry is simply "the
political application of Christianity."[662] Indeed, during the last
fifty years the Grand Orient has thrown off the mask and openly declared
itself to be political in its aims. In October 1887 the Venerable Bro.'.
Blanc said in a discourse which was printed for the lodges:

You recognise with me, my brothers, the necessity for Freemasonry
to become a vast and powerful political and social society having a
decisive influence on the resolutions of the Republican
government.[663]

And in 1890 the Freemason Fernand Maurice declared "that nothing should
happen in France without the hidden action of Freemasonry," and "if the
Masons choose to organize, in ten years' time no one in France will be
able to move outside us (_personne ne bougera plus en France en dehors
de nous_)."[664]

This is the despotic power which the Grand Orient has established in
opposition to both Church and Government.

Moreover, Grand Orient masonry is not only political but subversive in
its political aims. Instead of the peaceful trilogy of British masonry,
"Brotherly love, relief, and truth," it has throughout adhered to the
formula which originated in the Masonic lodges of France and became the
war-cry of the Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity." "It is the
law of equality," says Ragon, "that has always endeared Masonry to the
French," and "as long as equality really exists only in the lodges,
Masonry will be preserved in France."[665] The aim of Grand Orient
Masonry is thus to bring about universal equality as formulated by
Robespierre and Babeuf. In the matter of liberty we read further that as
men are all by nature free--the old fallacy of Rousseau and of the
Declaration of the Rights of Man--therefore "no one is necessarily
subjected to another nor has the right to rule him."[666] The
revolutionary expresses the same idea in the phrase that "no man should
have a master." Finally, by fraternity Grand Orient Masonry denotes the
abolition of all national feeling.

It is to Masonry [Ragon says again] that we owe the affiliation of
all classes of society, it alone could bring about this fusion
which from its midst has passed into the life of the peoples. It
alone could promulgate that humanitarian law of which the rising
activity, tending to a great social uniformity, leads to the fusion
of races, of different classes