“Loud is the claim of the nineteenth century to pre-eminence in civilization over the ancients, and still more clamorous that of the churches and their sycophants that Christianity has redeemed the world from barbarism and idolatry. How little both are warranted, we have tried to prove in these two volumes. The light of Christianity has only served to show how much more hypocrisy and vice its teachings have begotten in the world since its advent, and how immensely superior were the ancients over us in every point of honor. The clergy, by teaching the helplessness of man, his utter dependence on Providence, and the doctrine of atonement, have crushed in their faithful followers, every atom of self-reliance and self-respect. So true is this, that it is becoming an axiom that the most honorable men are to be found among atheists and the so-called “infidels”.
We hear from Hipparchus that in the days of heathenism “the shame and disgrace that justly attended the violation of his oath threw the poor wretch into a fit of madness and despair, so that he cut his throat and perished by his own hands, and his memory was so abhorred after his death that his body lay upon the shore of the island of Samos, and had no other burial than the sands of the sea.” But in our century, we find ninety-six delegates to the United States Anti-Masonic Convention, every one doubtless a member of some Protestant Church, and claiming the respect due to men of honor and gentlemen, offering the most Jesuitical arguments against the validity of a Masonic oath. The Committee, pretending to quote the authority of “the most distinguished guides in the philosophy of morals, and claiming the most ample support of the inspired…who wrote before Freemasonry existed”, resolved that, as an oath was “a transaction between man on one part and the Almighty Judge on the other”, and the Masons were all infidels and “unfit for civil trust”, therefore their oaths had to be considered illegal and not binding. But we will return to these lectures of Robertson and his charges against Masonry.
The greatest accusation brought against the latter is that Masons reject a personal God (this on the authority of Barruel and Robinson), and that they claim to be in possession of a “secret to make men better and happier than Christ, his apostles, and his Church have made them.” Were the latter accusation but half true, it might yet allow the consoling hope that they had really found that secret by breaking off entirely from the mythical Christ of the Church and the official Jehovah. But both the accusations are simply as malicious as they are absurd and untrue; as we shall presently see.”
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 