Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

308 ABBE BARRUEl/S VIEWS
quite in the right when I told him that this was the final object
of Free Masonry.
44 Oh how profound the combination of these mysteries!
their progress is slow and tortuous; but how artfully each
degree tends to the grand object!
44 In the two first degrees, that is to say, in those of apprentice
and fellow craft, the sect begins by throwing out its
liberty and equality. After that it occupies the attention of
its novices with puerile games of fraternity, or masonic repasts
; but it already trains its adepts to the profoundest secrecy
by the most frightful oaths.
44 In that of mas er, it relates to the allegorical history of
Adoniram, who is to be avenged; and of the word which
is to berecove cd.
41 In the degree of elect, it trains the adepts to vengeance*
without pointing out the p rson on whom it is to fall. It
carries them back to the time • f the patriarchs, when, according
to them, men knew no religion but that of nature,
and when every body was equally priest and pontiff. But
it had not as yet declared, that all religion revealed since
the time of the patriarchs was to be thrown aside.
44 This last mystery is only developed in the Scotch degrees.
There the brethren are declared free; the word so
long sought for is Deism; it is the worship of Jehovah;
such as was known to the philosophers of nature. The
true Mason becomes the Pontiff of Jehovah, and such is
the grand mystery by which he is extricated from that darkness
in which the profane are involved.
44 In the degree of Rosse Crucis, he who wrested the word,
who destroyed the worship of Jehovah, is Christ himself,
the author of Christianity ; and it is on the. gospel and on
the Son of Man that the adept is to avenge the brethren,
the Pontiffs of Jehovah.
44 At length, on his reception as Kadosch, he learns that
the assassin of Adoniram is the king, who is to be killed to
avenge the grand master Molay, and the order of the Masons,
successors to the Knights Templars. The religion