264 FROM THE ART OF BUILDING TO THE ART OF THINKING
find the following: "None will be received into the Order, who has not
given solemn oath or promise of an inviolable attachment to Religion,
King, and Morals. Any merchants of shoddy goods peddling their skep-
ticism, who will have spoken or written against the sacred dogmas of
the ancient faith of the Crusaders, will be forever excluded from the
Order." It is added that "these statutes are expressed in terms that are
quite appropriate for the lands in which they should be observed."^18
The profession of the Catholic faith—for no other was legal in the
kingdom of France—was substituted for the idea of tolerance implicitly
targeted by the Bull of 1738.
Lodges of both English and Scottish origin remained imbued by
Catholicism during the course of the eighteenth century, even within
their sometimes heterodox nature. They thus rebuffed the principal rea-
son for the papal condemnation, which, now rendered meaningless,
caused little worry among the French lodges to which the ecclesiastics
aligned themselves in Mass. Interestingly, in 1781 half of the members
of the L'Amitie a l'Epreuve Lodge of the Orient of Narbonne were
members of the clergy^19 and in 1780 there were twenty-six lodges
headed by priests.
In Search of the TraditionFrench masonic unity appears to have been ensured by the integral
respect for tradition that was general practice. This put it out of step
with the times, however. During the Age of Enlightenment, when the
Reason of Philosophers triumphed, faith was questioned if not outright
shaken and demanded fortification. A vast mystical current arose then
in reaction against the skeptics and the libertines. Freemasonry, faithful
to religion, helped to nurture this current. It could claim to respond to
all doubts and to unify the faith, which it would do in the name of the
religion it embodied. It was thus a matter of some importance that it
formulate its principles and establish its forms, that it go further than
the Church, or at least second that institution's efforts, which were no
longer capable of convincing the growing number of freethinkers.
Ramsay had written Cardinal Fleury as early as March 22, 1737:
"I have only ever attended them (Freemason assemblies) with an eye to