Mackey A G - Encylopedia of Freemasonry - The Grand Masonic ...

186 CROMWELL
CROSS
posed to have been used in the Celtic Mysteries
.
that is connected with its rise and rogress .
of the Institution, or in the authentic history
Cromwell . The Abb6 Larudan published Crosier. The staff surmountedby a cross
at Amsterdam, in 1746, a hook entitled Les carried before a bishop on occasions of solemn
Francs-Magors Ecrases, of which Kioss says
(Bibliog . der Freimaurerei, No . 1874) that it is
the armory from which all the abuse of Freemasonry
by its enemies has been derived .
Larudan was the first to advance in this book
the theory that Oliver Cromwell was the
founder of Freemasonry . He says that Cromwell
established the Order for the furtherance
of his political designs ; adopting with this
view, as its governing principles, the doctrines
of liberty and equality, and bestowed upon its
members the title of Freemasons, because his
object was to engage them in the building of a
new edifice, that is to say, to reform the human
race by the extermination of kings and all
regal powers. He selected for this purpose the ceremony . They are generally gilt, and made
design of rebuilding the Temple of Solomon . light ; frequently of tin, and hollow . The pastoral
staff has a circular head .
This Temple, erected by Divine command, had
been the sanctuary of religion . After years of Cross . We can find no symbolism of the
glory and magnificence, it had been destroyed
by a formidable army . The people who there
worshiped had been conveyed to Babylon,
whence, after enduring a rigorous captiviy,
they had been permitted to return to Jerusalem
and rebuild the Temple . This history of the
Solomonic Temple Cromwell adopted, says
Larudan, as an allegory on which to found
his new Order . The Temple in its original
magnificence was man in his primeval state
of purity ; its destruction and the captivity
of its worshipers typified pride and ambition,
which have abolished equality and introduced
dependence among men ; and the
Chaldean destroyers of the glorious edifice
are the kings who have trodden on an oppressed
people .
It was, continues the Abbe, in the year
1648 that Cromwell, at an entertainment
given by him to some of his friends, proposed
to them, in guarded terms, the establishment
of a new society, which should secure a true
worship of God, and the deliverance of man
from oppression and tyranny. The proposition
was received with unanimous favor ; and
a few days after, at a house in King Street,
and at six o'clock in the evening (for the Abbe
is particular as to time and place), the Order
of Freemasonry was organized, its degrees established,
its ceremonies and ritual prescribed,
and several of the adherents of the future
Protector initiated. The Institution was used
by Cromwell for the advancement of his
projects, for the union of the contending parties
in England, for the extirpation of the monarchy,
and his own subsequent elevation to
supreme power . It extended from England
into other countries, but was always careful to
preserve the same doctrines of equality and
liberty among men, and opposition to all
monarchical government . Such is the theory
of the Abbe Larudan, who, although a bitter
enemy of Masonry, writes with seeming fairness
and mildness . But it is hardly necessary
to say that this theory of the origin of Freemasonry
finds no support either in the legends
cross in the primitive degrees of Ancient
Craft Masonry. It does not appear among
the symbols of the Apprentice, the Fellow-
Craft, the Master, or the Royal Arch . This is
undoubtedly to be attributed to the fact that
the cross was considered, by those who invented
those degrees, only in reference to its
character as a Christian sign . The subsequent
archeological investigations that have
given to the cross a more universal place in
iconography were unknown to the rituals .
It is true, that it is referred to, under the name
of the rode or rood, in the manuscript of the
fourteenth century, published by Halliwell ;
this was, however, one of the Constitutions of
the Operative Freemasons, who were fond of
the symbol, and were indebted for it to their
ecclesiastical origin, and to their connection
with the Gnostics, among whom the cross was a
much used symbol . But on the revival in 1717,
when the ritual was remodified, and differed
very greatly from that meager one in practise
among the medieval Masons, all allusion to
the cross was left out, because the revivalists
laid down the principle that the religion of
Speculative Masonry was not sectarian but
universal. And although this principle was in
some points, as in the "lines parallel," neglected,
the reticence as to the Christian sign
of salvation has continued to the present day ;
so that the cross cannot be considered as a
symbol in the primary and original degrees of
Masonry .
But in the high degrees, the cross has been
introduced as an important symbol. In some
of them-those which axe to be traced to the
Temple system of Ramsay-it is to be viewed
with reference to its Christian origin and
meaning. Thus, in the original Rose Croix
and Kadosh-no matter what may be the
modern interpretation given to it-it was
simply a representation of the cross of Christ .
In others of a philosophical character, such as
the Ineffable degrees, the symbolism of the
cross was in all probability borrowed from the
usages of antiquity, for from the earliest