THE FIRST WITNESSES OF LUCIFER That the witnesses of Lucifer are in all cases attached to the Latin Church, whether as priests or laymen, is no matter for astonishment when it is once realised that outside this Church there is no hostility to Masonry.

For example, Robison's "Proofs of a Conspiracy" is almost the only work possessing, deservedly or not, any aspect of importance, which has ever been penned by a Protestant or independent writer in direct hostility to the Fraternity.

Moreover, Catholic hostility varies in a vanishing direction with distance from the ecclesiastical centre.

Thus, in England, it exists chiefly in a latent condition, finding little or no expression unless pressure is exercised from the centre, while in America the enforced promulgation of the _Humanum Genus_ encyclical has been one of the serious blunders of the present pontificate as regards that country.

The bibliography of Catholic Anti-Masonic literature is now, however, very large, nor is it confined to one land, or to a special epoch; it has an antiquity of nearly 150 years, and represents most of the European continent.