Blanchard J (anti-masonic) - Scotch Rite Masonry Illustrated Part I

22 THE CHEVALIER RAUSAY’S CAREER.Ramsay.” * * * “He was indeed the most learnedman, who, up to that time, had taken any interest in theorder.”Ramsay was a brilliant young Scotch Presbyterian; ofcourse, familia# with the Bible, which he garbled, travestied,and corrupted to manufacture Masonic degrees.lie was the son of a baker; educated in Edinburgh University.He afterward became a companion of kings.priests and pretenders; amassed great wealth, and apostatizedfrom Protestantism to Rome. He was twentyyears old when James II. threw the mace into theThames, and fled to Paris. He went to Holland, andunder a popular enthusiast, Pierre Poiret, plunged intothe tenets of the mystical theology then widely prevailing.In 1710 he lived six months in the family of themystical papist, Fenelon, Archbishop of Cambray, withwhom his apostacy to Romanism became complete. Hehad before been, in the words of Rebold, “The instrumentof the Jesuits ;“ framing Masonic degrees, andplotting the restoration of the Stuarts. He became tutorto the two sons of the first Pretender, Charles Edward,and Henry. His~ heart seems to have cleaved tobonnie Scotland. ~Hecalled his first invented degrees‘Scotch. (Ecossais.) He offered fortunes to his relatives,but they spurned him and his money, gained byapostacy;, by the sale of sham dignities, and from thepay of Catholic kings, priests, princes, and pretenders.The success of Charles II. in recovering his father’sthrone ;—his long reign, and the powerful backing ofthe French king, the Pope, and his Jesuits, exaltedtheir hopes .to the highest. Adventurers flocked tothem, and for a time Masonry was the rsge in France,and llamsav was its Head-center. He told the FrenchLIES NO DISPARAGEMENT TO MASONIC MORALITY. 23noblcsse, who despised a Masonry derived from stonemasons—mechanics,that his new degrees were broughtfrom Palestine in the time of the Crusades, by returnedprinces, priests, knights and nobles. And in 1740, asits grand orator, he pronounced a discourse before theGrand Lodge of France; manufacturing history as hewent on; and the falsehood was greedily swallowed.And the marvel is, if anything Masonic can be marvelous,that while this mass of fundamental lying is admittedand recorded by Mackey, Macoy, Folger and theother Masonic authors, they seem to deem falsehoodsno disparagement to pure Masonic “morality” and“truth !“ One has only to glance over their pages to seeall the facts just as here given.When France had been sown with the new degrees,it became necessary to codify and condense. Ramsaydigested a code of six degrees, called the “Ramsey Rite~”which he attempted to foist on the English, butwithout success. The gunpowder plot in 1605, wasbelieved, by the British masses, to have resulted fromthe Romish doctrine that Protcstants have no rightswhich Papists are morally bound to respect, beyondwhat policy dictates. And for three centu~ries Romishpriests (lid not consecrate a burial ground on Ihe soil ofEngland. The Stuarts sunk to rise no more; and Englandwould none of “Stuart Masonry.” But the floodfrom the mouth of the dragon flowed on. (Rev. Th:15.)The Chevalier De Bonneville, in fl54, formed a Chapterof Clermont in the Jesuits’ College of that name,with a Rite of Perfection of twenty-five degrees. ButMasonry is a “troubled sea whose waters cannot res t,but cast up mire and dirt.” After an agitated existenceof four years, this Clermont Chapter was merged in a