I did not bring Deism into Bavaria more than into Rome. I found it here, in great vigour, more abounding than in any of the neighboring Protestant States. I am proud to be known to the world as the founder of the Illuminati.
We see with what keenness and zeal the frivolous business of Freemasons is conducted, by persons knit together by the secrecy of their union.
Salvation does not lie where strong thrones are defended by swords, where the smoke of censers ascend to heaven or where thousands of strong men pace the rich fields of harvest. The revolution which is about to break will be sterile if it is not complete.
Let this circumstance of our constitution therefore be directed to this noble purpose, and then all the objections urged against it by jealous tyranny and affrighted superstition will vanish.
In another situation, and in an active station in life, I should have been keenly occupied, and the founding of an order would have never come into my head.
But alas, they are all sadly deficient, because they leave us under the domination of political and religious prejudices; and they are as inefficient as the sleepy dose of an ordinary sermon.
My general plan is good, though in the detail there may be faults.
The tenor of my life has been the opposite of everything that is vile, and no man can lay any such thing to my charge.
