“The Knights of St. John of Jerusalem”, writes Commander Gourdin, “sometimes called the Knights Hospitaliers, and the Knights of Malta, were not Freemasons. On the contrary, they seem to have been inimical to Freemasonry, for in 1740, the Grand Master of the Order of Malta caused the Bull of Pope Clement XII., to be published in that island, and forbade the meetings of the Freemasons. On this occasion several Knights and many citizens left the island; and in 1741, the Inquisition persecuted the Freemasons at Malta. The Grand Master proscribed their assemblies under severe penalties, and six Knights were banished from the island in perpetuity for having assisted at a meeting. In fact, unlike the Templars, they had not even a secret form of reception. Reghellini says that he was unable to procure a copy of the secret Ritual of the Knights of Malta. The reason is obvious, there was none!”
And yet American Templarism comprises three degrees. 1, Knight of the Red Cross; 2, Knight Templar; and 3, Knight of Malta. It was introduced from France into the United States, in 1808, and the first Grand Encampment General was organized on June 20, 1816, with Governor De Witt Clinton, of New York, as Grand Master.
This inheritance of the Jesuits should hardly be boasted of. If the Knights Templar desire to make good their claims, they must choose between a descent from the “heretical”, anti-Christian, kabalistic, primitive Templars, or connect themselves with the Jesuits, and nail their tessellated carpets directly on the platform of ultra-Catholicism! Otherwise, their claims become a mere pretense.
So impossible does it become for the originators of the ecclesiastical pseudo-order of Templars, invented, according to Dupuy, in France, by the adherents of the Stuarts, to avoid being considered a branch of the Order of the Jesuits, that we are not surprised to see an anonymous author, rightly suspected of belonging to the Jesuit Chapter at Clermont, publishing a work in 1751, in Brussels, on the lawsuit of the Knights Templar. In this volume, in sundry mutilated notes, additions, and commentaries, he represents the innocence of the Templars of the accusation of “heresy”, thus robbing them of the greatest title to respect and admiration that these early free-thinkers and martyrs have won!
This last pseudo-order was constituted at Paris, on the 4th of November 1804, by virtue of a forged Constitution, and ever since, it has “contaminated genuine Freemasonry”, as the highest Masons themselves tell us. La Charte de transmission (tabula aurea Larmenii) presents the outward appearance of such extreme antiquity “that Gregoire confesses that if all the other relics of the Parisian treasury of the Order had not silenced his doubts as to their ancient descent, the sight of this charter would at the very first glance have persuaded him.”
The Grand Master of this spurious Order was a physician of Paris, Dr. Fahre-Palaprat, who assumed the name of Bernard Raymond. Count Ramsay, a Jesuit, was the first to start the idea of the Templars being joined to the Knights of Malta. Therefore, we read from his pen the following: “Our forefathers (!!!), the Crusaders, assembled in the Holy Land from all Christendom, wished to unite in a fraternity embracing all nations, that when bound together, heart and soul, for mutual improvement, they might in the course of time, represent one single intellectual people.”
This is why the Templars are made to join the St. John’s Knights, and the latter got into the craft of Masonry known as St. John’s Masons. In the Sceau Rompu, in 1745, we find, therefore, the following most impudent falsehood, worthy of the Sons of Loyola: “The lodges were dedicated to St. John, because the Knights-Masons had in the holy wars in Palestine joined the Knights of St. John.””
H. P. Blavatsky
The Mark Of God: Understanding Your "I AM Presence" 