Scottish Rite Masonry Illustrated - The Masonic Trowel

160 “SATAN’S “Ignes Fatui, TO SWAMP MEN ETERNALLY” QUOTES THE RuLE AS SATAN DID TO DECEIVE MEN. 161
angel of light, personifying or symbolizing Christ, who
only is the true “Light” and the true “Word,” who “was
with God and who was God.” (John 1, 1.) And we do
not slander the framers of these 33 degrees in saying
they made thbrn for money. Folger is good Masonic’
authority, and he says tt. See his book of this rite, p.
38, already cited. Were these Jews framing degrees to
bring men to Christ? No! A thousand times No!
Then these degrees are Satan’s ignes fatui, to swamp
men eternally in hell. And it is of such false worshipers
of whom the Psalmist says: “Surely thou didst set
them in slippery places.” (Ps. 73, 18.) And these degrees
are those places into which these false coast lights
are drawing life’s voyagers. The only escape from this
dire conclusion is to suppose that the Holy Ghost goes
into the lodges, as Dr. Oliver supposed, and takes the
names of Christ which the ritual uses, and converts men
to Christ. But whoever heard of a Christian revival in
a lodge? Or of village lodges joining in a village
revival? No: Voltaire, who was a Mason, did not lead
prayer-meetings, nor do lodge-masters love and worship
Christ.
This very twent~r-fifth degree, which makes “Knights
of the Brazen Serpent,” the lodge uses for purposes of
idolatry, as the children of Israel did, who burnt incense
to it (£ Kings 18, 4), and which Hezekiab destroyed.
Read on page 157 the finishing touches, when
this “Knight of the Brazen Serpent” is made. Nine
strokes; five slow, three hurried, and one by itself, are
struck with mallets. Nine steps are taken like the
waving motions of a snake, and the pass-word given him
is I. N. R. 1.. which are the initials in Latin of: Jesus
of Nazareth, King of the Jews, and this, ages before
there was any Latin tongue. And he who cannot see
in this conjuring, every mark and feature of devilworship,
has already been blinded by idolatry.
But why do these degree-makers, grade after grade,
follow and employ the Sacred Scriptures? The answer
is: for the same purpose for which the Book of Mormon
does the same thing. That foul imposition contains
whiohe chapters of the Bible; sometimes quoted literally
and sometimes as in these degrees, mixed with Mormon
gibberish. They quote the Bible as Satan did to Christ,
to deceive men. They quote it while they hate it, and
would destroy it if they could. Did Aaron Burr and the
traitor Arnold love the Bible? Does Albert Pike love
it? Some ten years ago the Grand Orient lodge of
France, as is well known, erased from their ritual the
name of God and the immortality of m~zn, and though
some of the lodges went through the farce of e,~communicating
that lodge and its adherents, others did not.
And Masonic prints now declare the standing of those
atheist Masons good!
And why should they not? The standard Masonic
authorities, cited in the notes of the preceding degrees,
boast their origin from the heathen mysteries; from
astrology; from “incantations,” and all that the Bible
calls demon-worship. The lower degrees drop the name
of Christ from Scriptures used in their lodge lectures,
to invite and draw in the Jews and Christ-hating
classes. And the higher degrees only admit Him when
the lodge-dupes have become hardened by their idolatries
and mockeries; and then only admit Him on a
level with heathen teachers; and worship, or rather
insult him, by the use of human skulls, cross-bones, and