Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

I
HUTCHINSON'S SPIRIT or MASONRY. 131
and have descended through this long succession of age*
uncorrupted; but our modes and manners are deduced from
the different eras of paradise, the building of the temple at
Jerusalem, and the Christian revelation." Three eras, one
for each of the three degrees.
If Mr. Hutchinson was mad, my Lord Petre, and Mr.
Holt, and Mr. Noel, &c. ought not to have recommended
his labour, and Mr. Preston should not have quoted his
work as follows: " Mr. Hutchinson, in bis ingenious treatise
entitled, The Spirit of Masonry."* And, if Mr, H.
were in his right mind, he should not have asked the following
questions, p. 170. u If our ceremonies mean not the
matter which I have expressed; if they imply not the moral
and religious principles which I have endeavoured to unveil;
I ask you, MASONS, what they do imply, import or indicate?"
(Because they are senseless and ridiculous, he thinks
they must be unearthly, heavenly, divine.)
" Can we presume so many learned and noble personages
would, for many successive ages, have been steady members
of the fraternity, if the mysteries were unimportant, and the
ceremonies unintelligible? It cannot be; take away their
SPIRIT, and they become ridiculous."—Hutch, p. 171.
To learn the spirit of these ceremonies, I turn back, and
on p. 170.1 find, " The Divinity looking down with an
eye of commiseration upon the deplorable state of man,
in his mercy and love, sent us a Redeemer and Mediator, 11
&c. " In the MASTER'S ORDER this whole doctrine is symbo-
* And the Grand Lodge of Maryland. u The enlightened brother
Hutchinson, in his elaborate work entitled the Spirit of Masonry," p. 180.
F. M. Library. Again, p. 199., quoting from Mr. Hutchinson's Spirit of
Maaonry, he says, " I again introduce the roost respectable authority which
has ever fallen to my lot to peruse." Again, p. 190., «* The erudite peHx>f
the author of the Spirit of Masonry."