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

fIISTORICAL ANALYSISCLOSING CEREMONIESSECRET MASTER’SDEaRER.Solomon—Brother Inspector, pray what’s the clock?Adoniram—The end of the day.Solomon—What does there remain to do?Adoniram—To practice virtue, shun vice and reniainsilent.”Solomon—Since there remains no more to do than topractice virtue and shun vice, let us again enter intosilence, that the will of God may be done and accomplished.It is time to ~i,es1,Brother Inspector, givenotice by the mysterious numbers that the lodge is goingto be closed.A doniram—( Strikes seven times, 000 000 0 with hishands.)All— (Strike seven times, 000 000 0 with their hands.)Solomon—(Strikes seven times, 000 000 0 with hishands after which he gives the sign of silence, which thebrethren answer and the lodge is closed.)Vote SS.—”The duty of a Secret Master Is to keep S carsfnl wat*over the conduct of the Craft In general: to raactiee virtue, shnn vies.and remaIn In sIlence.“—Messy’s Unsyolepedie mad Diolimery of bee.meseW. A~ beret Master.FOURTH ORSECRET MASTER’S DEGREE.How Masonry got Its tItle “The Royal Art”—1.odgery and Poperey over.throw Cromwell’s Commonwealth—SImllsrIty of MasonIc Jugglery andl’riestcraft—The HIgher Degrees Invented by French JesuIts and TheIrinstruments—Secrecy and SubjectIon the Chief Elements of Lodgeryend Popery—Freemasonry a RelIgIous Pestllence—OuerrlIIs Gen. Pike.Most PuIssant SovereIgn Orsnd Commander—who but a JesuIt couldInvent ench a Degree as the Secret Muter’s ?—“Oue Stupendous De’monalcal Possemion.”The Stuart Dynasty had fallen. The stream of Englishpopular liberty, from incipient jury trial underAlfred; through Magna Charta under John; and theoverthrow of Priests and Monasteries by Henry VIII;had flowed steadily onward, but it had met an ice-gorgein the house of Stuart; the meanest of monareha and ofmen. But the dam was broken and the stream rushedon. Charles I, had been beheaded for treason to hispeople, (1649.) His son Charles II, was driven an exileinto France; but being a Secret Papist, he joined theFreemasons and regained his throne by the secret unionof French Papists and English Masons. This gave toMasonry the title of “The Rogal Art.” (Hume’s EnglandII, 606 and Rebold, p. 54.) His brother JamesII, an open Papist, reigned three years as a weak despot;then threw the Mace into the Thames and fled from hi~throne and people to the Freneh Monarch;, “the eldestSon of the Romish Church.” The Freneh wags calledhim “‘The Simpleton who lost three Kingdoms for amass.” This weak Stuart, like his brothcr Charles, was“accepted” as a Mason; took up his head-quarters at the