Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

256 ANCIENT FREE MASONRY IS DEISM.
sonry, but adopted .children; as speculative Free Masons
are accepted Masons: (vide p. 133.) and women become
Adopted Masons, as merchants, lawyers, tailors, become
Accepted Masons, all of both sexes being entitled Free.
And our modest author would charge the Jewish women
with that which few of his readers could have a Bible at
their side to contradict; appealing to Exodus xxxviii. 8. for
the origin of Jodges of Adoption. The verse reads, " And
he made the laverof brass, and the foot of it of brass, of
the looking glasses {brazen mirrors] of the women assembling,
which assembled at the door of the tabernacle of the
congregation/ 1
" THE CANDLESTICK
" Hath seven branches and seven lights, .symbols of the
seven sciences, to which the priests ought to apply themselves,
like the priests of Memphis and of Thebes, to wit:
grammar, rhetoric, logic,, arithmetic, geometry, music, and
astronomy." We must infer from this, that the studies of
the fellow craft's degree are reviewed in the chapters; which
is a match for the allegory of a scene which never occurred,
as faithfully represented by Free Masonry, in the tradition
of Hiram Abiff.
" THE TAB&E OF SHEW BREAD
" Was intended to show the necessity of union among
the priests: this allegory instructs us, as it did the Levites."
But concluding the command to Moses how to construct
the table, (Ex. xxv* 30.) the Lord said, " And thou shah set
upon the table shew bread before me alway" Reason is
certain that it is not her part, faithlessly to inquire why it
pleased the Lord to have a table of shew bread in the ceremonial
of his ancient church; but only to inquire into the
fact: did it please ? And rinding God's own word in support
of the fact, while only her own blindness is counter to
it, she is reason no longer, but a fool, to doubt it, to despise
it, to degrade it among plumb-lines and trowels, in the
mystical ceremonies of a nocturnal society.