Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

ANCIENT FREE MASONRY IS DEISM. 239
woman, wealth, or wine, Free Masonry cannot help that
And should he at length find out, that "the Being of all
beings, of whom his heart is full;" is no God, but frailty,
dust, or poison, and become an Atheist: Free Masonry cannot
help that either. She does certainly inculcate upon him
the religion in which all men agree ; and can as readily excuse
his errors, as those of her pupils, who fall into the uncharitable
faith in divine revelation: " Except a man be born
again, he cannot see the kingdom of God" (John, iii. 3.)
Free Masonry regards all her children with impartial
fondness; she weeps over their errors, and does her utmost
to reclaim them, whether they deviate to the right hand or
left, and aims alike! to tame the spirit of the fulminating
priest, and to engage the esteem of the moral brother.* Not
destitute of the wisdom which is from beneath, she chooses her
measures with deep cunning. Having learned that the most
stupid, when he regards the heavens, must acknowledge that
there is a God ;t she, too, is very forward to acknowledge it.
But millions, blindly worshipping him in the stock of a tree,
or a block of stone, carved with men's hands, she is blind with
them, and worships him so too: millions, sharper sighted,
see and worship him in the river that fertilises their fields,
and in the corn that renews their strength; she sees and
worships too, bowing most humbly to the drag and the net,
for by these we the.
But it is never to be forgotten, that she, herself, inculcates
the " essentials of religion, in which all men agree, uniting
men of the most distant countries and most opposite tenets,
in one indissoluble bond of affection. 9 ' All men do not agree
in receiving divine revelation; therefore, Free Masonry does
not teach it, the Grand Chapter to the contrary notwithstanding
; and, stripped of her pious disguise, Free Masonry
* Vide Free Mas. Mwu, also, Wustrationt of Masonry,chap. Origin and
Advantages of Masonry.
t Quis'egt tain vecors, qui c&m suipexerit in coefom, non sentiat Deura
esse ?—Cicero.