T. B. H. Stenhouse notes that Church leaders saw Freemasonry as degenerate version of priesthood.
T.B.H. Stenhouse, Rocky Mountain Saints, London: Ward, Lock, and Tyler, 1873, 698
The Mormon leaders have always asserted that Free-Masonry was a bastard and degenerate representation of the order of the true priesthood. The reader needs, therefore, no other statement than that of the leaders, to form an estimate of the signs, grips, passwords, rites, and ceremonies of the Endowment House.