Ritual , Secrecy , and Civil Society
Trinosophes in 1818 . In any case , whether Chemin was or was not a Mason is ultimately of secondary importance , as the principles of Freemasonry were almost in the public domain at the time , and there were certainly quite a number of Masons in the story of Theophilanthropy .
While the two principles of Theophilanthropy – the existence of God and the immortality of the soul – are drawn directly from the Deism of the Enlightenment , they also have much older traditional religious sources . In fact , these two ideas are often associated with , for example , the Noahides , those sages of Antiquity who revered the precepts given by God to Noah 20 . Anderson ’ s Constitutions reference the Noahides in order to anchor the origins of Freemasonry . Equally , in Paris in the years preceding the Revolution , the Philalèthes of the famous Loge des Amis Réunis saw in these two principles the pinnacle of masonic ideas 21 . If at the time Chemin had had no personal contact with Freemasonry whether directly or by proxy through friends ( which , it must be said , would be truly astonishing ) – this man of letters could have discovered it through numerous works . Note , for example , that at the beginning of the Revolution , there appeared a pamphlet which divulged in detail the rituals of a masonic Deist system which showed numerous features shared with Theophilanthropy : The Elect of Truth . Originally , The Elect of Truth was a system of high degrees established by the Masons of Rennes in 1770 22 . The system then won a certain amount of success and was disseminated in several towns in the west and in Paris . At the top degree of the system , the Elect of Truth professed a militant Voltarian Deism – which is to say a rational Deism extremely hostile to revealed religions . As a testimony of the time also affirms : “ These notebooks were divulged and publicly sold during the revolution , and served as the basis for the religious faith that the republic has adopted ” 23 .
But if Freemasonry did probably play a role in the origins and the history of Theophilanthropy , it was above all in the new faith ’ s afterlife that it would have a major presence . Somehow , once forbidden , Theophilanthropy would take refuge in the lodges . Chemin-Dupontès became a masonic luminary , and even a luminary of the Ancient and Accepted Scottish Rite . Thus he was the author , in 1823 of a memoir entitled Mémoire sur l ’ Écossisme par le F∴ Chemin-Dupontès G :. Inspecteur Général du Rit Écossais , Député au G∴ Orient de France , Vénérable de la R∴L∴ des Sept Écossais Réunis et auteur de l ’ Encyclopédie maçonnique . After twenty years , he would graft into Freemasonry many of the ideas of the revolutionary religion :
The initiated , reborn into a new life , recognized that many teachers ∴ , and he himself perhaps , had allowed themselves to be led by two opposing errors … a lack
20
See , for example , the article devoted to them in the Encyclopédie of Diderot and d ’ Alembert : “ Noahides … . The precepts given to this patriarch and his children seem to be no more than the precepts of the natural rights … to adore the creator [ they must ] inspire the sentiments of humanity in all our behavior . Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire raisonné …, Genève , Pellet , 1778 , Volume 23 , p . 5 .
21
“ Première Circulaire …” in : Charles Porset , Les Philalèthes et les Convents de Paris , une politique de la folie , Honoré Champion , Paris , 1996 , p . 262-263 .
22
See : Pierre Mollier , “ Un système rationaliste de Hauts-grades au XVIIIe siècle : Les Elus de la Vérité ”, in Studia latomorum & historica-Mélanges offerts à Daniel Ligou , collected by Charles Porset , Honoré Champion , 1998 , p . 313-326 .
23
Idem , p . 324 .
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