Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

OF fBU MASONRY* 329
secrets find numbers ready to listen to them, and to run over
the same course.
" Free Masonry, professing mysteries, instantly roused
these people, and the lodges appeared to the adventurers
who wanted to profit by the enthusiasm, or the aoarice of
their dupes* the fittest places m the world for the scene of
their operations. The Rosierucians were the first who
availed themselves of the opportunity. This was not the
society which had appeared formerly under that name, and
was now extinct; but a set of Alchymist*, pretenders to
the transmutation of metals and the universal medicine,
who, the better to inveigle their votaries, had mixed with
their own tricks, a good deal of the absurd superstitions of
that sect, in order to give a greater air of mystery to the
whole, to protract the time of instruction, and to afford
more room for evasions, by making so many difficult conditions
necessary for perfecting the grand work, that the
unfortunate gull, who had thrown away his time and his
money, might believe that the failure was owing to his own
incapacity or unfitness for being the possessor of the grand
secret 19 I
(P. 64) " The German Masons, however, did one sensible
thing; they sent a deputation to .Old Aberdeen, Scotland,
to inquire alter the caves where their venerable mysteries
were known, and their treasures were hid. They had, as
they thought, merited some confidence, for they had remitted
annual contributions to their unknown superiors, to the
amount of some thousands of ru dollars. But, alas I their
ambassadors found the Free Masons of Old Aberdeen ignorant
of all this, and equally eager to learn from the ambassadors
what was the true origin and meaning of Free
Masonry, of which they knew nothing but the tmple tale of
old Hiram."
(P. 58.) " In 1756, or 1757, a complete revolution took
place. The French officers, who were prisoners at large
in Beriin, undertook, with the assurance peculiar to their
nation, to instruct the simple Germans in every thing that
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