Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

300 ABBE BARRUEl/s VIEWS
Jesus Nazarenus Rex Jud&orttm, (Jesus of Nazareth, King
of the Jews.) The Rosicrucian is taught the following interpretation
: The Jew of Nazareth, led by Raphael into
Judea; an interpretation which, devesting Christ of his divinity,
assimilates him to a common man, whom the Jew
Raphael conducts to Jerusalem, there to suffer condign
punishment for his crimes. As soon as the candidate has
proved that he understands the masonic meaning of this
inscription I. N. R. I., the master exclaims, my dear brethren,
the Word is found again, and all present applaud
this luminous discovery, that HE whose death was the consummation,
and the grand mystery of the Christian religion,
was no more than a common Jew, crucified for his
crimes.
" It is thus that the seet have blasphemously adopted the
very word which recalls to the Christian all that love which
he bears for the Son of God expiring on the cross for the
salvation of mankind, as their watchword of hatred. They
repeat it to each other when they meet, and I. N. R. I. is to
perpetuate their spite against him who loved them even
unto the death of the cross.
" It is not on the authority of persons strangers to the
craft, that we have disclosed this atrocious mystery of occult
Masonry. What I have already said respecting my
initiation to the first degrees, put me in the way of conversing
with those whom I knew to be more advanced, and in
many of these interviews it happened, that notwithstanding
all their secrecy, some unguarded expressions escaped the
most zealous adepts, which threw light on the subject.
Others lent me their books, presuming that their obscureness,
and the want of the essential words, or the method
of discovering them, would baffle all my attempts to understand
them. I nevertheless discovered some of these
words, such as Jehovah, by uniting several pages, and only
taking the bottom letter of each. This famous word discovered,
I soon got knowledge of that of I. N. R. I. I then
combined all that I had seen, all that I knew of the diffe-