Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

148 FREE MASONRY.
it have been endured a moment ? Free Masonry, making
every allowance, offers nothing in absurdity equal to it.
The crocodile, the rat, the cat, &c. are found by modern
travellers, embalmed by the side of their deluded worshippers.
The children of Abraham, distinguished by the most astonishing
miracles, taught by the prophets, and possessed of
the oracles of God, had neither eyes to see, nor hearts to
understand, neither knowledge nor understanding to say of
their idols of wood, " I have burned part of it in the fire;
yea, also, I have baked bread upon the coals of it; I have
roasted flesh and eaten it; and shall I fall down to the
stock of a tree." [Isaiah, ch. 44.]
Making every allowance, Free Masonry furnishes nothing
in absurdity to equal this. How could it have been endured
for a moment ?
Pass to the Greeks, that high-spirited people, that nation
of philosophers and heroes, to whom the rest of mankind
were barbarians. They believed in the divinity and the
vices of Jupiter, the oracles of Apollo, the labors of Hercules,
and the innumerable fables of a ridiculous mythology
; Socrates, their highest boast, in his last moments, solemnly
reminding his friends of the rooster, due to the deified
Doctor Esculapius. This entirely surpasses the follies
of Free Masonry, and yet it is undeniably true, and the
Sovereign Inspector General might declare it so without
fear of contradiction.
Free Masonry may be challenged to furnish an absurdity
surpassing that exhibited by the conquerors of the world,
when, in their degradation, they chose a horse to fill the
dignity first honoured by Brutus ; or when in their glory
the armies of Rome refused to engage with their enemies,
if the chickens refused to eat I
No people that ever lived upon the earth, possess by nature
more cunning than the Egyptian, more intelligence
than the Greek, or more gravity than the Roman. Yet into
these absurdities they fell, not as individuals, or as frater-
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