Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

194 TO PROVE ANY GREAT MAN A FREE MASON.
CHAPTER XXXI.
Showing how to prove any great man a Free Mason ; and
how the three Degrees are types of the Fall of Man,
the Deluge, and the last Day.
" In mathematics he was greater
u Than Tycho Brahe or Erra Pater:
" For he by geometric scale
« Could take the size of pots of ale;
" Resolve by sines and tangents strait,
" If bread and butter wanted weight;
" And wisely tell what hour o'the day
" The dock would strike, by Algebra."
Town'8 Speculative Free Masonry, chap. 5. p. 54.— u Ancient
Masonry, Operative and Religious." Chap. 6. p. 63.
—" Modern Free Masonry, Specvlatwe and Religious."
THAT ancient Masonry was operative, he proves, from the
fact, that the ark, the tabernacle, and the temple, were
each built by the application of '.' the science of architecture
to operative Masonry." To frame an edifice requires
the application of the principles of geometry or Masonry.
Men applying the principles of operative Masonry, he
makes it clearly to appear * are Masons, although they
touch not the rule, or the plumb-line, with their own hands.
Moreover, men taught of God how to build, are, evidently,
when they build, Masons applying the directions of the
Most High to Masonry.
Excellent logic! I have ever entertained great doubts
until now, whether Noah, and Moses, and even Solomon,
were Masons; and whether Masonry was, indeed, a divine
institution " given by God to the first Masons."* But
* Book of Constitutions. Antiquities, No. 6. p. 15.