Free Masonry - The Masonic Trowel

FREE MASONRY THE TOOL OF THE ILLUMINEES. 335
after, and are to be made Masons, even though they should
not be of any service to IUuminismin its ulterior projects."
u Spare no pains to gain the ascendancy in those lodges
which are established, either to reform, or to destroy/ 1 (B*
vol. in. p. 91.)
The investigations of such men into the origin of Free
Masonry, and their speculations upon its character and design,
will be worth having. If they were utterly at a loss to
tell whence it sprung, we shall not be sure it was the gift of
God to the first Masons, as both editions of the Book of
Constitutions of Massachusetts, Preston, Calcott, Hutchinson,
and others, declare; if they deemed it a medley of
puerilities which the craft themselves do not understand,
we shall doubt whether it teaches the seven liberal arts and
sciences, as Webb, and Cross, and Preston, and Tannehill,
and Dalcho, and a host, maintain. If they describe it, and
use it, as the fittest of all instruments for the accomplishment
of their diabolical purposes against every form of religion
and every system of civil government, we shall doubt,
reader, shall we not, whether it does rest, according to Mr.
Town, and the Grand Chapter of New-York, "on the
same co-eternal and unshaken foundation, contain and inculcate,
in substance, the same truths, and yrvpose the same ultimate
end, as the doctrines of Christianity taught by divine
revelation!"
These impious self-worshippers, to effect their monstrous
designs, entered into Free Masonry as Satan in Paradise
entered into the serpent The ruin they wrought in the
French, revolution, is enough to make every considerate
man shudder, and to be jealous of the means by which it
was effected. Why should we embrace this modern serpent,
court it, honour it ? Why not rather shun it with abhorrence,
if not with dread ? Say to it as of old :
"Became thou hast done this, thou art accurted
"Above all cattle, each beast of the field;
" Upon thy belly grovelling shalt thou go,
" And duit thou shalt eat all the days of thy life."
Mil7on, 10th book.