Moreover, devotion to them absorbs time and interest due to the church, and paralyzes Christians by association with worldly men, and by the malignant power of the spirit of the world.
This system, and those who imitate its hierarchal and centralizing organization, also give power to those hierarchal principles and systems against which Congregationalism has ever protested as corrupting and enslaving the church.
The system also cultivates a love of swelling titles, and of gaudy decorations and display in dress, that are hostile to the genius of our Constitution, and to true republican and Christian dignity and simplicity.
From this system other organizations have borrowed much, and some do not essentially differ from it in practical working.
Other organizations, however, for the ends of temperance reform, have adopted modes of organization, display in dress, and secret signs for the purposes of recognition and defense. The ends and proceedings of these temperance societies are so well known that it is often denied that they are secret societies; yet they do, avowedly for purposes of defense, resort to secrecy, and have imitated modes of dress and organization found in Masonry. And members of Masonic lodges declare that they involve, in fact, all the principles of Masonic organizations, and rely on them ultimately leading to their own order.
While we recognize the true devotion of the members of these societies to the cause of temperance, and acknowledge and commend their active efforts to resist the progress of one of the greatest evils of the age, we yet can not concede the wisdom or desirableness of a resort to principles and modes of action which tend to create a current toward other secret organizations not aiming at their ends, nor actuated by their spirit of temperance reform.
In conclusion, we respectfully present the Association the following principles foradoption [sic]:
Resolved, 1. That in dealing with secret organizations, this Association recognizes the need of a careful statement of principles and a wise discrimination of things that differ.
2. That there are some legitimate concealments of an organized character--such as the privacies of the family and business firms, the temporary concealment of public negotiations at critical stages, the occasional withdrawal of scandals which could only disturb and demoralize communities, and the secrecy of military combinations; nor are we prepared totally to condemn all private plans and arrangements between good and true citizens, in great emergencies, to resist the machinations of the wicked.
3. That organizations whose whole object and general method are well understood, and are known to be laudable and moral--such as associations for purely literary or reformatory purposes--are not to be sweepingly condemned by reason of a thin veil of secrecy covering their precise methods of procedure; yet we deem that outer veil of secrecy to be unwise and undesirable, inasmuch as it holds out needless temptations to deeds of darkness, and gives unnecessary countenance to other and unlawful combinations; and, whenever the act of membership involves an unconditional oath or promise of submission, adhesion, and concealment, under all circumstnces [sic], that compact is a grave moral wrong.
4. That there are certain other wide-spread organizations--such as Freemasonry--which, we suppose, are in their nature hostile to good citizenship and true religion, because they exact initiatory oaths of blind compliance and concealment incompatible with the claims of equal justice toward man and a good conscience toward God; because they may easily, and sometimes have actually, become combinations against the due process of law and government; because, while claiming a religious character, they, in their rituals, deliberately withhold all recognition of Christ as their only Savior, and of Christianity as the only true religion; because, while they are, in fact, nothing but restricted partnerships or companies for mutual insurance and protection, they ostentatiously parade this characterless engagement as a substitute for brotherly love and true benevolence; because they bring good men in confidential relations to bad men; and because, while in theory, they supplant the church of Christ, they do also, in fact, largely tend to withdraw the sympathy and active zeal of professing Christians from their respective churches. Against all connections with such associations we earnestly advise the members of our churches, and exhort them, "Be ye not unequally yoked together with unbelievers."
Secret Societies by Edward Beecher Page 6
