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

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In order to preserve peace and harmony no private piques or
quarrels must be brought within the door of the Lodge, far
less any quarrel about Religions or Nations or State-Policy,
we being only, as Masons, of the Catholic Religion above
mentioned (the religion in which all men agree); we are also
of all Nations, Tongues, Kindreds and Languages, and are
resolved against all Politics as what never yet conduced to
the welfare of the Lodge, nor ever will. This charge has
always been actively enjoined and observed; but especially
ever since the Reformation in Britain or the dissent and
secession of these Nations from the communion of Rome.
No sooner had these noble words been printed,[139] than there came to
light a secret society calling itself the "truly Ancient Noble Order
of the Gormogons," alleged to have been instituted by Chin-Quaw Ky-Po,
the first Emperor of China, many thousand years before Adam. Notice of
a meeting of the order appeared in the _Daily Post_, September 3,
1723, in which it was stated, among other high-sounding declarations,
that "no Mason will be received as a Member till he has renounced his
noble order and been properly degraded." Obviously, from this notice
and others of like kind--all hinting at the secrets of the Lodges--the
order was aping Masonry by way of parody with intent to destroy it,
if possible, by ridicule. For all that, if we may believe the
_Saturday Post_ of October following, "many eminent Freemasons" had by
that time "degraded themselves" and gone over to the Gormogons. Not
"many" perhaps, but, alas, one eminent Mason at least, none other than
a Past Grand Master, the Duke of Wharton, who, piqued at an act of the
Grand Lodge, had turned against it. Erratic of mind, unstable of
morals, having an inordinate lust for praise, and pilloried as a
"fool" by Pope in his _Moral Essays_, he betrayed his fraternity--as,
later, he turned traitor to his faith, his flag, and his native land!
Simultaneously with the announcement that many eminent Masons had
"degraded themselves"--words most fitly chosen--and gone over to the
Gormogons, there appeared a book called the _Grand Mystery of
Freemasons Discovered_, and the cat was out of the bag. Everything was
plain to the Masons, and if it had not been clear, the way in which
the writer emphasized his hatred of the Jesuits would have told it
all. It was a Jesuit[140] plot hatched in Rome to expose the secrets
of Masonry, and making use of the dissolute and degenerate Mason for
that purpose--tactics often enough used in the name of Jesus!
Curiously enough, this was further made evident by the fact that the
order ceased to exist in 1738, the year in which Clement XII published
his Bull against the Masons. Thereupon the "ancient order of
Gormogons" swallowed itself, and so disappeared--not, however, without
one last, futile effort to achieve its ends.[141] Naturally this
episode stirred the Masons deeply. It was denounced in burning words
on the floor of the Grand Lodge, which took new caution to guard its
rites from treachery and vandalism, in which respects it had not
exercised due care, admitting men to the order who were unworthy of
the honor.
There were those who thought that the power of Masonry lay in its
secrecy; some think so still, not knowing that its _real_ power lies
in the sanctity of its truth, the simplicity of its faith, the
sweetness of its spirit, and its service to mankind, and that if all