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

56 ANCIENT
ANCIENT
the Masons of England into two classes,, as
follows :
" The Ancients, under the name of Free and
Accepted Masons, according to the old Institutions
; the Moderns, under the name of
Freemasons of England. And though a similarity
of names, yet they differ exceedingly
in makings, ceremonies, knowledge, Masonic
language, and installations ; so much, that
they always have been, and still continue to
be, two distinct societies, totally independent
of each other." (7th ed ., p. xxx .)
The " Ancients " maintained that they
alone preserved the ancient tenets and practises
of Masonry, and that the regular Lodges
had altered the Landmarks and made innovations,
as they undoubtedly had done about the
year 1730, when Prichard's Masonry Dissected
appeared .
For a long time it was supposed that the
" Ancients " were a schismatic body of
seceders from the Premier Grand Lodge of
England, but Bro. Henry Sadler, in his Masonic
Facts and Fictions, has proved that
this view is erroneous, and that they were
really Irish Masons who settled in London .
In the year 1756, Laurence Dermott, then
Grand Secretary, and subsequently the
Deputy Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of
the Ancients, published a Book of Constitutions
for the use of the Ancient Masons, under
the title of Ahiman Rezon, which work went
through several editions, and became the
code of Masonic law for all who adhered,
either in England or America, to the Grand
Lodge of the Ancients, while the Grand
Lodge of the Moderns, or the regular Grand
Lodge of England, and its adherents, were
governed by the regulations contained in
Anderson's Constitutions, the first edition of
which had been published in 1723 .
The dissensions between the two Grand
Lodges of En gland lasted until the year 1813,
when, as will be hereafter seen, the two bodies
became consolidated under the name and title
of the United Grand Lodge of Ancient Freemasons
of England . Four years afterward
a similar and final reconciliation took place in
America, b y the union of the two Grand
- Lodges in South Carolina . At this,day all
distinction between the Ancients and Modems
has ceased, and it lives only in the memory of
the Masonic student .
What were the precise differences in the rituals
of the Ancients and the Moderns, it is
now perhaps impossible to discover, as from
their esoteric nature they were only orally
communicated ; but some shrewd and near
approximations to their real nature may be
drawn by inference from the casual expressions
which have fallen from the advocates of each
in the course of their long and generally
bitter controversies .
It has already been said that the regular
Grand Lodge is stated to have made certain
changes in the modes of recognition, in consequence
of the publication of Samuel Prichard's
spurious revelation. These changes were, as
we traditionally learn, a simple transposition
of certain words, by which that which had
originally been the first became the second, and
that which had been the second became the first .
Hence Dr . Daleho, the compiler of the original
Ahiman Rezon of South Carolina, who was
himself made in an Ancient Lodge, but was
acquainted with both systems, says (Edit .
1822, p . 193), " The real difference in point of
importance was no greater than it would be to
dispute whether the glove should be placed first
upon the right or on the left ." A similar testimony
as to the character of these changes is
furnished by an address to the Duke of Atholl,
the Grand Master of the Grand Lodge of
Ancients, in which it is said : " I would beg
leave to ask, whether two persons standing in
the Guildhall of London, the one facing the
statues of Gog and Magog, and the other with
his back turned on them, could, with any
degree of propriety, quarrel about their stations
; as Gog must be on the right of one, and
Magog on the right of the other. Such then,
and far more insignificant, is the disputatious
temper of the seceding brethren, that on no
better grounds than the above they choose to
usurp a power and to aid in open and direct
violation of the regulations they had solemnly
engaged to maintain and by every artifice
possible to be devised endeavored to increase
their numbers." It was undoubtedly to the
relative situation of the pillars of the porch,
and the appropriation of their names in the
ritual, that these innuendoes referred . As we
have them now, they were made by the
change effected by the Grand Lodge of Moderns,
which trans po sed the original order in
which they existed before the change, and in
which order they are still preserved by the continental
Lodges of Europe .
It is then admitted that the Moderns did
make innovations in the ritual ; and although
Preston asserts that the changes were made
by the regular Grand Lodge to distinguish its
members from those made by the Ancient
Lodges, it is evident, from the language of
the address just quoted, that the innovations
were the cause and not the effect of the schism,
and the inferential evidence is that the changes
were made in consequence of, and as a safeguard
against, sp urious publications, and
were intended, as has already been stated, to
distinguish impostors from true Masons, and
not schismatic or irregular brethren from
those who were orthodox and regular .
But outside of and beyond this transposition
of words, there was another difference
existing between the Ancients and the Modems
. Dalcho, who was acquainted with both
systems, says that the Ancient Masons were
in possession of marks of recognition known
only to themselves . His language on this
subject is positive. " The Ancient York Masons,"
he says, " were certainly in possession
of the original, universal marks, as they were
known and given in the Lodges they had left,
and which had descended through the Lodge
of York, and that of England, down to their
day . Besides these, we find they had peculiar
marks of their own, which were unknown