THE ARCANE SCHOOLS - Fort Myers Beach Masonic Lodge No. 362

Fox and Wesley, which from being religious time-tables broadened into
detailed panoramic pictures of the period before, and that following,
the Grand Lodge--the Assembly on 1717 becomes the more remarkable.
Against such a background, when religion and morals seemed to reach
the nadir of degredation, the men of that Assembly stand out as
prophets of liberty of faith and righteousness of life.[113]
Some imagination is needed to realize the moral declension of that
time, as it is portrayed--to use a single example--in the sermon by
the Bishop of Litchfield before the Society for the Reformation of
Manners, in 1724. Lewdness, drunkenness, and degeneracy, he said, were
well nigh universal, no class being free from the infection. Murders
were common and foul, wanton and obscene books found so good a market
as to encourage the publishing of them. Immorality of every kind was
so hardened as to be defended, yes, justified on principle. The rich
were debauched and indifferent; the poor were as miserable in their
labor as they were coarse and cruel in their sport. Writing in 1713,
Bishop Burnet said that those who came to be ordained as clergymen
were "ignorant to a degree not to be comprehended by those who are not
obliged to know it." Religion seemed dying or dead, and to mention the
word provoked a laugh. Wesley, then only a lad, had not yet come with
his magnificent and cleansing evangel. Empty formalism on one side, a
dead polemical dogmatism on the other, bigotry, bitterness,
intolerance, and interminable feud everywhere, no wonder Bishop Butler
sat oppressed in his castle with hardly a hope surviving.
As for Masonry, it had fallen far and fallen low betimes, but with the
revival following the great fire of London, in 1666, it had taken on
new life and a bolder spirit, and was passing through a
transition--or, rather, a transfiguration! For, when we compare the
Masonry of, say, 1688 with that of 1723, we discover that much more
than a revival had come to pass. Set the instructions of the _Old
Charges_--not all of them, however, for even in earliest times some of
them escaped the stamp of the Church[114]--in respect of religion
alongside the same article in the _Constitutions_ of 1723, and the
contrast is amazing. The old charge read: "The first charge is this,
that you be true to God and Holy Church and use no error or heresy."
Hear now the charge in 1723:
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_A Mason is obliged by his Tenure, to obey the moral law; and if
he rightly understands the Art, he will never be a stupid Atheist
nor an irreligious Libertine. But though in ancient times Masons
were charged in every country to be of the religion of that
country or nation, whatever it was, yet it is now thought more
expedient only to oblige them to that religion in which all men
agree, leaving their particular Opinions to themselves: that is,
to be Good men and True, or Men of Honor and Honesty, by whatever
Denomination or Persuasion they may be distinguished; whereby
Masonry becomes the Centre of Union and the Means of conciliating
true Friendship among persons that must have remained at a
perpetual distance._
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If that statement had been written yesterday, it would be remarkable
enough. But when we consider that it was set forth in 1723, amidst
bitter sectarian rancor and intolerance unimaginable, it rises up as