Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

ANCIENT FREE MASONRY IS DEISM. 253
she might, it could be no better than sacrilege. Now,
whence should we expect aid in support of our assertion,
sooner than from the Christian Mason ? Who would more
readily contribute to preserve the hallowed vessels of the
church, than brethren of the church ? Ah! they did not
believe it When it was told to them, and perhaps their very
reverence for these things has been, no doubt it has been,
one of the chief folds of the bandage to blind them.
. I do not now presume to know the use our brethren make
of the emblems of the royal arch degre^; but surely they
do not mean to use them sacrilegiously; they do not use
them as we shall see Free Masonry uses them. They are
Christians; -she is a heathen, or what you please; and yet
we would call her by some amiable name here, for the
kindness of discovering to us the use to which she can put
the holy things of the ancient church.
As a porch to the masonic tabernacle, she ever has much
to say about the Free Mason who built it. You shall find
it so in the Chart, Monitors> Library, &c. It was Moses
upon Mount Sinai, that received the masonic word from
the mouth of the Most High, and handed it down to posterity
; and various passages of the Pentateuch are read in
the ceremonies of the royal arch chapters, calculated and
intended to impress the reader or hearer with the belief,
that they have some indefinite relation to the mysteries of
Free Masonry.
I frankly confess that, some time having been confident
they had no honest connexion with the modern invention,
I have not suffered a suspicion to arise of their nefarious
connexion. They have seemed to Stand among the regalia
and insignia of the lodge, rather to ennoble base Masonry,
than for any malicious purpose of degrading them;
and probably that is yet the right interpretation of these
emblems in the chapters of North America; but our lady
is a mistress, knows how to train up children, has a large
school of dull scholars, we may charitably hope; and though
Americans may not learn so fast in this degenerating cli-