Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

MENTAL DEPRAVITY. 147
ning the answer where Masonry is said to have begun, in
the garden of Eden, the first man, Adam, lured by the false
hope of exaltation, tell into disobedience and the snare of
death; then the old world became entirely corrupted, and
was in consequence destroyed by the flood: next, the sons
of Noah, while he yet lived, madly raised the tower of Babel
: afterward, the Egyptians, the wisest people of their
age, who raised monuments of art, that the puny moderns,
with their best efforts, have not the means to take down,
became the most superstitious people on earth: " they lost
Pelusium, the key of Egypt," by the stratagem of Cambyses,
" who placed in the front of his army a great number
of cats, dogs, sheep, and other animals, which were regarded
as sacred by the Egyptians, and then attacked the city
by storm.
" The garrison, not daring either to fling a dart, or shoot
an arrow, for fear of hitting some of these animals, Cambyses
became master of the place without opposition. 11
[Rollin, vol. i. p. 365.]
If the Egyptians were not so wise and learned as the
moderns, neither is Free Masonry so contemptible as their
superstition. "It is astonishing to see a nation which
boasted its superiority above all others with regard to wisdom
and learning, thus blindly abandon itself to the most
gross and ridiculous superstition. Indeed, to read of animals,
and vile insects, honoured with religious worship,
placed in temples, and maintained with great care at an
extravagant expense; to read that those who murdered
them were punished with death, and that these animals
were embalmed, and solemnly deposited in tombs, assigned
them by the public; to learn that this extravagance was
carried to such a pitch, that leeks and onions were acknowledged
as deities, were invoked in necessity, and depended
upon for succour and protection ; are absurdities which we,
at this distance of time, can scarcely believe; and yet they
have the evidence of all antiquity. 11 [Rolling vol. i. p. 116.]
This superstition is a matter of historical fact: how could