Chapter 3 "Oath of Initiation of an Unidentified Secret Order" Summary and Analysis

Chapter 3 presents a document, which Cooper received from an anonymous woman. It purports to be an oath of allegiance to the Jesuits or to the Knights of Malta. In the oath, the recipient is bound to the society upon pain of death and everlasting torment and agrees to freely and wholly subjugate his personal will to that of his superiors. He agrees that the relentless murder and torture of anyone outside of the society is not sinful or wrong and promises to always do what is in the best interest of the society on pain of death. One strange aspect of the oath is that the recipient declares that it applies to them "even as a corpse or cadaver (perinde ac cadaver)" (p...