Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

MENTAL DEPRAVITY. 149
nities, but as whole nations; not for one half century
alone, but during their national existence.
We are, unfortunately, independent of antiquity for examples
of this sort. Man is the same inconsistent being
in all ages of the world, in all stages of civilization. Idolatry,
superstition, and imposture, have not ceased from the
earth. Folly is not confined to Free Mason lodges. One
half of the human race are now the miserable victims of a
faith scarcely superior to the worship of leeks and onions:
one fifth, a brave, and honest, and intelligent people, are
the followers of the false prophet—to this day, the dupes of
the Mahommedan imposture; and when we come to our
own family of men, we find the enlightened and philosophic,
the liberal and pious of Christendom, divided into
the worshippers of images and saints, and the rebels from
the authority of the Pope; each to the other no less
strange, unaccountable, and absurd, than Free Masonry is
to the reader.
An ancient, and yet a modern fact, more hideous and
unnatural than any yet mentioned, but perfectly sure, is:
" Pilate said, whom will ye that I release unto you, Barrabbas
or Jesus, who is called Christ ? And they say unto him,
Barrabbas: they cried out all at once, not this man, but
Barrabbas.
" And he released unto them him that for sedition and
mtirder was cast into prison, whom they had desired: but
he delivered Jesus to their will."
Their preference was meditated^ was expressed with loud
clamour ; u away with this man !"
And millions of the people favoured of heaven, children
of faithful Abraham and chosen Israel, have steadily, for
eighteen centuries, maintained the obstinate unbelief of
their fathers, and do yet maintain it.
Comparing her absurdities with the character of this fact,
Free Masonry has a right to be proud: yet it has been fivefold
longer endured by the sharp-sighted Jews, than the
name of Free Masonry has been known.