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

how they might find their children honestly as gentlemen. And they
could
find no manner of good way. And then they did crye through all the
realme,
if there were any man that could enforme them, that he should come to
them, and he should be soe rewarded for his travail, that he should
hold
him pleased.
"After that this cry was made, then came this worthy clarke Ewclyde,
and
said to the King and to all his great lords: 'If yee will, take me your
children to governe, and to teach them one of the Seaven Scyences,
wherewith they may live honestly as gentlemen should, under a condicion
that yee will grant mee and them a commission that I may have power to
rule them after the manner that the science ought to be ruled.' And
that
the Kinge and all his counsell granted to him anone, and sealed their
commission. And then this worthy tooke to him these lords' sonns, and
taught them the science of Geometric in practice, for to work in stones
all manner of worthy worke that belongeth to buildinge churches,
temples,
castells, towres, and mannors, and all other manner of buildings."
[150] Ancient Egypt under the Pharaohs, vol. I p. 393.
[151] 1 Kings vi. 8.
[152] An allusion to this symbolism is retained in one of the wellknown
mottoes of the order--"_Lux e tenebris._"
[153] "An allegory is that in which, under borrowed characters and
allusions, is shadowed some real action or moral instruction; or, to
keep
more strictly to its derivation ([Greek: a)/llos], _alius_, and [Greek:
a)gorey/o], _dico_), it is that in which one thing is related and
another
thing is understood. Hence it is apparent that an allegory must have
two
senses--the literal and mystical; and for that reason it must convey
its
instruction under borrowed characters and allusions throughout."--_The
Antiquity, Evidence, and Certainty of Christianity canvassed, or Dr.
Middleton's Examination of the Bishop of London's Discourses on
Prophecy.
By Anselm Bayly, LL.B., Minor Canon of St. Paul's._ Lond, 1751.
[154] The words themselves are purely classical, but the meanings here
given to them are of a mediaeval or corrupt Latinity. Among the old
Romans, a _trivium_ meant a place where three ways met, and a
_quadrivium_
where four, or what we now call a _cross-road_. When we speak of the
_paths of learning_, we readily discover the origin of the
signification
given by the scholastic philosophers to these terms.