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

it.
And now, are we in this country to hold our peace? to hold out our hands and
have the shackles put upon them? Is the press to be muzzled, and the whole
country to be awed and kept under the feet of this institution, so that no man shall
dare to speak his mind? God forbid! "Every plant," says Christ, "which my
heavenly Father hath not planted shall be rooted up." The works of darkness shall
be dragged to the light; and the power of this institution must be broken by a
thorough expose of its oaths, its principles, its spirit and tendency. Afraid to speak
out against such an abomination as this! Remember that he that would save his
life by concealing the truth, and refusing to embrace and defend it, shall lose it.
Again, Freemasonry is a most intolerant and intolerable despotism.
Let any one examine their oaths, and see what implicit obedience they pledge to
the great dignitaries, and Masters, and High Priests of their lodges, and they will
see what an institution this is in a republican government. There is no appeal from
the decision of the Master of a lodge. In respect to everything in the lodge, his
word is law. In a recent number of the "National and Freemason," which fell into
my hands, the editor asserts that there is no appeal to the lodge from the decision
of the Master of the lodge, and that he should allow none. In the ascending scale
of their degrees, they swear to render implicit obedience to the grand lodges, and
the higher orders above them, and this beforehand. They are not allowed to
question the propriety of those decisions at all. They are not allowed to discuss, or
to have any voice or vote in regard to those decrees. There is not in the world a
more perfect and frightful despotism than Freemasonry is from beginning to end.
Now, think of the great number of Freemasons in this country that are becoming
accustomed to yield this implicit obedience to arbitrary power, a one man power,
running through every lodge and chapter throughout the whole entangled system.
And this institution is penetrating every community, selecting its men, and
enforcing their obedience to arbitrary power throughout this whole republican
country. And will not the country awake to this great wrong and this great
danger? A friend of mine, a minister of the Gospel, writes me that he had been
himself a Mason. He was urged to join the institution, as I was myself; but he
renounced it many years ago, and supposed that it was dead. But some fifteen
years since he found it reviving in the neighborhood where he was living, and he
preached a sermon exposing it. That very week they burned him in effigy at his
own gate; and that even now he could not preach against it and expose it without
being set upon and persecuted he knows not to what extent,.
And this, then, is the way for Masons to meet this question! If allowed to go on
they will soon resort to mobs, as the slaveholders and their sympathizers did; and
it will be found that Masonry can not be spoken against without mobs arising to
disperse any assembly that may meet for the examination of the subject, If fifteen
years ago a minister of the Gospel could be burned in effigy before his own gate,
for bringing this institution to the light, and if now threats of assassination come
from the four winds of heaven if a man speaks or writes the truth concerning it, if
let alone how long will it be before it will have its foot upon the neck of the whole
nation, so that it will be sure to cost any man his life who dares to rebuke it?